


All the Ways that Matter

by luxover



Series: Pond Ice and the In Between [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 10:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 59,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxover/pseuds/luxover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re not old enough to not need Claude, not yet, but they’re old enough to not need him there every minute of every day, and Claude’s not so blind that he doesn’t see that. He’s old enough that he doesn’t need them like that anymore, either, and that’s the point. </p><p>In which the Brieres grow up and Claude moves out... Or tries to, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Ways that Matter

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a companion piece to the Sid/Geno story, [Pond Ice and the In Between](http://archiveofourown.org/works/773278). You certainly do not have to read that in order to understand this, but you might want to, anyway.
> 
> Also, it's stated in the fic, but it might just be easier to go into this knowing that Caelan is 13, Carson is 12, and Cam is 10.
> 
> All the thanks in the world to Kristen, who is 100% the reason this fic was finished, even though she hates Giroux. Lady, you are a true hero of the revolution!!!

The day Claude finally gets his casts removed, he makes the bad call of letting the boys come with him to the doctor's office. Granted, he doesn't really have much of a choice because Danny's stuck working, but still. In hindsight, he should have rescheduled his appointment, or dropped them off at their friend's house next door, because they're mostly just yelling and destroying things, and laughing at the pamphlets that they took from the waiting room. 

"Let's hope they don't accidentally chop your arm off with the cast saw," Caelan says. He and Carson are sitting on the patient bench, purposefully crinkling the white paper as loud as they can, while Cameron sits in one of the two chairs. Claude's stuck standing, leaving one chair open for the doctor, the brim of his backwards cap pressing awkwardly into the wall he's leaning against. 

"They know not to chop my arm off," Claude says. "They do this stuff all the time." 

"That's why I said _accidentally,_ " Caelan stresses. 

"Yeah," Carson interjects. "We googled it, and it's happened before." 

Claude rolls his eyes a little, and then he says patiently, "Nobody's leaving here with any more or any less limbs than they came in with." 

Cameron speaks up then—Claude's only ally, most of the time—and he says, "Stop joking about it; it's not funny." 

"I think it's funny," Caelan says. "He can get a hook. Or, like, a hockey stick just attached to his stump." 

"It's happened before," Carson repeats sagely, and Cameron screws up his face like he's going to start a fight. 

"No, it _hasn't,_ " he says. 

Claude cuts them all off before a fight can break out in the small room, and he says, "Alright, enough. It's fine; the saw is tiny, and it's not going to cut my arm off." 

"I know that," Cameron rushes out, although he looks relieved, and then after a beat, he smiles a little like he thinks he's being smart. He's got a good sense of humor, but can't hold a poker face for anything. "Maybe with a little bit of training, you'll finally be able to open the pickle jar by yourself again." 

“Yeah, or actually be able to get to the Sandship in Zelda by yourself,” Caelan says. 

The three of them break out into peals of laughter, and Claude reaches out, flicks Cameron on the arm. He says, "And maybe I just won't make you guys any more grilled cheese sandwiches, eh?" 

"What!" Caelan objects, as if Claude could have ever made good on a threat like that when grilled cheese sandwiches are one of the few things he can actually make well. It makes Claude want to laugh and threaten them a little bit more, but then the door opens and Biz walks in, and so Claude shelves that idea for later. 

"What's up, Claude," Biz says, looking down at his clipboard. When he glances up and sees the boys, he adds, "Men. How's it hanging?" and Cameron ducks his head a little. 

"Hey, Biz," Carson says, his legs kicking back and forth from where they dangle over the edge of the patient bench, and then he leans over, steals the stethoscope right off from around Biz's neck. 

"Carson," Claude starts out like a warning, but then Biz waves him off. 

"Let him mess with it," he says, sitting down in the only free chair and rooting through one of the drawers along the wall. "Maybe he can tell me how it works." 

"You're a _doctor,_ " Caelan reminds him. 

"I _know,_ " Biz says back, in the same tone, and Cameron laughs out loud until he remembers that he's being shy. 

Biz turns his focus back to setting up the cast saw, and Carson gets to trying out the stethoscope, first on his own chest, and then on Caelan's. When they put it under Caelan's shirt, he shrieks and jumps like it's colder than ice. 

Claude turns to Cameron, then, who's watching Biz intently, and asks quietly, "You okay, bud?" 

Cameron shrugs a little and then responds just as quietly in French, "What kind of doctor doesn't know how to use a stethoscope?" He says _stethoscope_ in an American accent, though, probably because he doesn't know the word is the same in French, and that gets Caelan's attention. 

"He was joking," Caelan says, one end of the stethoscope still pressed to his chest, and Carson makes a big show about how loud Caelan's voice sounds to him, ripping the stethoscope from his ears and shoving Caelan a little. 

And then, because nothing in Claude's life ever goes right, Biz turns around and pulses the saw twice before saying, "Alright, G, which arm are we amputating first?" 

"Oh my god," Cameron says to himself over his brothers' laughter, pulling the neck of his t-shirt over his face until his eyes are just barely peeking out over the top. Amputation may be gruesome and unpleasant, but Cameron's still a boy, and if Claude's losing his arms, Cameron's going to watch. Claude wonders if he should be flattered or worried or what. 

Claude holds his left arm out first because it's closer, lays it flat on the countertop, and Biz makes quick work of it with the saw. The boys hover as close as Claude will let them, watching steadily as if Biz's hand could slip at any moment, and don't seem at all undeterred when it doesn't. Biz gets the cast off in no time, tossing the plaster pieces aside and exposing Claude's skin to the light for the first time in weeks. 

"Ugh," Biz says when he sees it, sounding delighted. "Dude, you're hideous!" 

That only serves to set the boys off, who all gag and then shuffle even closer, dying to get a better look as Claude gingerly tests his wrist, flipping it over to look at the small, silver surgery scar on the back of his hand. 

"What's with your arm hair?" Caelan asks gleefully. 

"No, what's with your _skin?_ " Carson asks. 

And then, as if going down the line, Claude turns to Cameron, who looks apologetic although he's nodding in agreement. 

"It's true, G," he says. "You've got like a weird alien claw now." 

"Thanks for the encouragement," Claude deadpans. "You guys are really great." 

"Don't we know it," Biz says, partially to Claude but mostly to the boys, and Claude just shakes his head, smiles a little _Screw you_ to Biz. Biz, for his part, just looks unimpressed and says, "Alright, let's crack this other one open." 

Cameron scoots even closer to watch this time around, and as Biz laughs maniacally and pulses the cast saw again, Claude can't help but feel a little bit betrayed. 

 

The four of them leave the office not long after that, the air around them cold but still as they cut across the parking lot. Caelan's in this bizarre phase where he won't wear a winter coat, so he's only wearing a hoodie that's halfway damp from a snowball fight; sometimes, Claude worries that he’ll miss out on these sorts of things—the little things—when he moves out, and he has to remind himself time and time again that _moving out_ doesn’t have to mean _moving on,_ and that just because things are changing, that doesn’t mean he’s going anywhere.

Now that the casts are off, it’s weird to be able to actually make use of his wrists, and Claude finds himself still using just his fingertips to do things that he would usually use his palm for, like turning door knobs and holding his paper coffee cup. He makes the mental note to start rehabbing and strength training his wrists as soon as possible, even though they still won't be in the best shape for hockey on Thursday, and to start keeping driving gloves with him when he goes out, seeing as he can actually wear them now and no longer has to freeze his fingers off on the frozen steering wheel. 

Claude hits the unlock button on his keys when they get close, and then the boys race for the car without looking for traffic, running straight through a giant pile of slush. 

"Watch for cars!" Claude calls out, even though he's aware that there are none coming their way, and then he adds, "And knock the snow off your shoes before you get in!" 

"We already did," Caelan calls back, and despite the claim, Claude hears three sets of boots knocking together a second later. 

They're not quiet in the car—not by a long shot—but they're just talking amongst themselves, Caelan looking back over the center console at Carson and Cameron, and so for Claude, they might as well not be saying anything at all. It gives him time to think and to plan out what they're having for dinner and what he needs to get done so everyone's ready for school tomorrow, and then he mentally arranges his schedule so that he can hang with Hartsy and Brayden over the weekend and still have time for errands and the gym. 

Tuning back into the conversation, Claude learns that he hasn't missed anything, because they're just talking about the random medical supplies that Biz let them take on the way out, things like tongue depressors to spoon out the eyes of their enemies and pieces of gauze to cover up the empty sockets, and mini-bottles of hand sanitizer because _germ theory is not a joke, little dudes._

"Hey, Claude?" Cameron says. "What's a prostate?" He says it _pro_ state, like pro-athlete-state, and looking in the rearview, Claude sees that he's reading a pamphlet on men's health. 

Sticking his hand back behind his seat, Claude says, "Gimme that," and takes it when it's handed to him. It's not that Cameron's too young to learn about that kind of stuff, especially since he's only asking about it in the medical context of _something in your body that can get cancer if you're not careful,_ but Claude still feels his cheeks heat up a little at the thought of explaining the prostate to a ten-year-old, anyway. So instead he throws Danny under the bus and says, "Ask your father." 

"That's okay," Cameron says, and then two seconds later, although Claude doesn't see what happens, he snaps at Carson, " _Stop it._ " 

It's par for the course, but since it's all still pretty tame, Claude doesn't say anything, and just lets them work things out for themselves. 

“Hey, you know what we should do again?” Caelan asks out of the blue. “We should go back to that place with like, the laser tag and mini-golf and stuff.” 

Carson starts laughing at the reminder, and he says, “And Claude wore that dumb golf outfit with the orange shirt and plaid shorts.” 

“Oh,” Claude says, feigning ignorance, “you mean that time I completely crushed all three of you guys?” 

“You’re like thirty,” Caelan points out, and—not that there’s anything wrong with that—Claude feels the need to disabuse him of this notion. 

“I’m twenty-four.” 

“ _So_ dumb,” Carson says. 

“Yeah,” Cameron agrees, and when Claude looks back in the rearview mirror, Cameron’s looking listlessly out the window. Cam swears he’s fine, and he honestly doesn’t seem to mind driving places, but Claude was scared shitless when he found out about the car accident, was scared even after he learned that Danny and Cam were okay, and so he just likes to keep an eye on it. “You can’t really brag when you’re a grown-up.” 

“What?” Claude asks, half incredulous and half just playing the part. “That’s a terrible double standard.” 

“Life’s not fair, G,” Carson tells him, none too gently. 

“I’m starting to realize that,” Claude says, and he slows down the car in order to make the left into their development. 

“And maybe Biz can come with us,” Carson suggests. 

“ _No,_ ” Cam says, nearly whining as he drags out the vowel. 

“What, he’s _fun,_ ” Carson insists, and Claude wants to tell Cam that Biz is harmless, but he knows the three of them, and knows that it’ll just make things worse. 

So instead, he says, “What about Brayden? He’s sort of on your level with putting.” 

“I’m offended,” Caelan says. 

“Awesome,” Claude tells him, finally pulling into the driveway. They’re not going anywhere else, and so he pulls into the garage to leave the driveway clear for Danny. “Mission: accomplished.” 

Cam reaches forward just as Claude’s throwing the car into park, and he puts his hands on the juncture where Claude’s shoulders meet his neck, squeezing his hands in some semblance of a terrible massage. 

“ _Ahh!_ ” Claude says, reflexively hunching his shoulders and leaning forward, out of Cameron’s reach. Ever since they discovered where Claude was ticklish a few months ago, they’ve been liberally exploiting his one weakness. “I should have never told you about that!” 

It’s not even true, that he told them; Carson discovered it when Claude fell asleep face-down on the couch one afternoon and he went to wake him up by violently shaking Claude’s shoulders. Claude had reacted a little embarrassingly, flailing and falling off the couch and onto Zoey, thus effectively starting this reign of terror, where he never knows when it’s coming. 

None of the boys so much as respond to him, instead undoing their seatbelts and throwing open the car doors, rushing inside like a mob was after them. Claude shakes his head to himself and then follows them inside. 

 

Danny comes home once the boys are all in bed, sometime around ten-thirty or so; Claude’s on the couch playing the Wii, wearing nothing but a backwards cap and a pair of gym shorts, Zora lying on his feet, and when the door opens, he calls out, “Hey, Danny.” 

“Hey,” Danny calls back, his voice almost immediately followed by the sound of keys dropping into the bowl by the door. The dogs go wild, barking and running towards the door, their nails sounding on the hardwood, and Danny rushes to quiet them before asking, “Boys asleep?” 

“Should be,” Claude says, and then Danny rounds the corner, looking exhausted. He drops himself down into one of the armchairs, and Claude pauses his game before asking, “Rough day?” 

“Not really, just long.” Danny runs his fingers through his hair, and the thing is, Claude knows Danny’s not thrilled with his job; Danny probably would’ve changed career tracks ages ago if he didn’t have three kids to look after and to buy things for. Danny gives up a lot for them, happily and willingly, until he’s got nothing left in his life for himself except for hockey. He’s a really fucking good dad, and Claude hopes that the boys know that. 

“Leftover spaghetti and meatballs, if you want,” he offers, and he thinks, _Now’s as good a time as any to break the news._

“I’m good for now,” Danny says. “Maybe in a bit.” Then, after a second of staring at the paused tv screen, he asks, “Carson get you into that?” 

“No,” Claude says, huffing out a breath of laughter, and in the end, he doesn’t tell Danny; he hasn’t been able to tell Danny all week, even though it’s just three simple words: _I’m moving out._ But it’s not that simple, and won’t ever be, because those words don’t explain any of the intricacies that Claude would mean them to imply, like, _You’re my family no matter where I am,_ and, _It doesn’t mean I don’t need you guys just because I want to grow up a little._ Instead, he kicks his bare feet up onto the coffee table. “Just proving a point.” 

“Ah,” Danny says, as if he knows, and of course he does; he knows the three of them better than even Claude does, having been there since day one. “Sylvie’s taking them this weekend, by the way. Starting tomorrow.” 

“Thursday?” Claude asks. 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay,” he says; Claude already knew it was Sylvie’s weekend because they’re on a pretty consistent schedule with that, but Danny likes to remind him anyway, likes to talk about it, probably out of some mix of dread over losing the boys for a few nights, and anxiety over losing them to her. 

Danny smiles tiredly at him and asks, “Hockey tomorrow?” 

“Hundred percent, now that my casts are off,” Claude says, holding up his hands and rotating his wrists back and forth. “You see that email Crosby sent out about the new place?” 

“He’s not that bad,” Danny says preemptively, because it’s not like Claude said anything about that. Or maybe it was in the tone of his voice, Claude doesn’t know. 

“Danny,” Claude says slowly. “He broke my wrists. _On purpose._ ” 

“He said it was an accident,” Danny says, and when Claude raises his eyebrows, he adds, “Alright, so he’s not great, and I don’t like the guy any more than you do. But he’s not _that_ bad, not when it comes to running the league.” 

Claude rolls his eyes and shakes his head, because he recognizes what Danny’s doing: being courteous and diplomatic, and not taking sides, as if anyone gives a shit whether or not he likes Crosby. It’s pointless, anyway, because while Danny’s polite, they all know that he hates Crosby just as much as Claude does; they all know that he’s firmly on Claude’s side because he’s loyal to a fault. 

Danny reaches up and loosens his tie, and he says, “If you want someone to take him out on the ice, I imagine Hartsy would be up for the job.” 

Claude laughs out loud at that one, partially because it’s not true at all, and partially because there’s nothing truer. Hartsy gets a lot of shit for things—especially from the guys, and especially regarding the way he plays on the ice—but if Claude had to choose someone to have his back in a fight, or to date his sister, not many people are higher up on the list than Hartsy, not even the Schenns. Danny is, but then again, Danny’s family, and so Claude supposes he doesn’t really count. 

“You say that like I can’t take him out myself,” Claude says. 

“Can you?” Danny shoots back, and Claude just laughs a little because of course he fucking can. 

Danny gets up and heads into the kitchen, grabbing a cup from the cabinets before opening the fridge and rooting around for the Brita filter that’s inevitably been pushed to the back, hidden by V8 and half-finished Capri Suns, baggies of carrot sticks left over from their school lunch and bottles of orange Gatorade. Claude doesn’t turn around because he’s comfortable, but he does listen to Danny shuffling around, to him starting the microwave and opening the utensil drawer, and the sounds are so familiar from over the past few years that Claude can picture in his head exactly what Danny’s doing. 

“I’m gonna sharpen my skates tomorrow, if you want me to do yours,” Claude says. 

“Yeah, would you?” Danny responds. “I need some tape, too, while you’re out.” 

“I’ve got like six rolls somewhere; you can have one.” 

“Thanks,” Danny says. And then after a pause, “How’d it go with Biz?” 

“Good. I was in and out pretty fast,” Claude says. “He still scares the shit out of Cameron, although I don’t know why.” 

“Me either,” Danny says, and a second later, he’s sitting back down in his armchair, a bowl of spaghetti in one hand, his glass of water in the other. Claude sits up for just long enough to lay out a coaster for him on the coffee table, and then collapses back into the cushions. “I guess it’s a good thing, though, right? Does this mean he’s the smartest of the three?” 

He’s smiling as he says it, clearly joking because he doesn’t really compare them, and Claude can’t help but smile back. 

“I dunno,” Claude tells him. “He’s also the only one who tried cutting his own hair with kitchen scissors, so.” Danny tilts his head like, _Point taken,_ and then Claude says, “Shit, I miss the ice.” 

“Me too,” Danny says. “Hard to think we went all summer without it.” 

“Gonna be a good season, though,” Claude says. “Us and Brayden and Hartsy. Reemer graduated, and so he’s back, and Coots transferred schools so he could play with us again.” 

“It’ll be good to have him back,” Danny says. “And don’t forget Jake.” 

“Yeah, and Jake,” Claude says. “It’s gonna be a good one.” And he’s not superstitious, not at all, but he can feel it in his bones, as solid and real as anything he’s ever known; it’s going to be really fucking good this year, and he’s ready for it. 

 

Things are hectic in the house the next morning, both because Danny's still there to see the boys, and because _of course_ none of them are packed and ready to head over to their mom's for the weekend, even though they swore that they were last night, and even though all they really needed to pack was their DS games. It means that they're running more than ten minutes behind on a very exact, already-cutting-it-close schedule, Claude running around like a lunatic in the kitchen, trying to feed the dogs and pack lunches, while Danny doles out cereal and fruit on the other side of the breakfast bar. 

"Mayo," Claude says to himself, looking at the eight slices of bread that are laid out, two of them already covered with mustard. "Mayo, mayo, mayo." He drops his butter knife on the countertop to rifle through the fridge, and when he finds it, immediately opens the jar to start spreading it over the remaining slices, sticking his leg out and using his foot to keep the fridge door open until he puts the mayo away. 

On the other side of the kitchen, Cameron sleepily tells Danny, "I'm just not hungry, Dad. I don't want anything." 

"I'm not going to let you have a Pop-Tart just because you won't eat Cheerios all of a sudden," Danny tells him. 

From the top of the stairs, Caelan yells down, "Claude. _Claude!_ " 

"Yeah, bud?" Claude calls back, slapping turkey down onto three of the sandwiches, and salami on the fourth. "Breakfast is out, let's go!" 

"Have you seen my New Super Mario game?" 

"Um," Claude shouts, half distracted slicing a tomato and almost taking his thumb off in the process. 

"It's in his sock drawer," Carson tells Claude, and thank god for Carson, because he's slurping down the leftover milk from the bottom of his cereal bowl, and seems to be pretty packed and ready to go. 

"In his _sock_ —?" Claude starts to ask, before shaking his head like it doesn't matter and calling up the stairs, "Check your sock drawer." 

"I already did," Caelan calls back. "That's just Super Mario, not _New_ Super Mario." 

Danny chimes in then, and tells Caelan, "You can live without it for one weekend; come on down for breakfast." 

There's a long pause, during which time Claude cuts the four sandwiches in half and stuff them into plastic baggies, and then Caelan says heavily, " _Fine._ " 

"Tell him to check the bathroom cabinet," Cameron says, his cheek resting on his closed fist as he picks the banana slices out of his Cheerios and eats them. 

"You do have a voice, you know," Danny tells him, but it's already a quarter 'til, and they're running really late, and so Claude just does it himself. 

"Check the medicine cabinet!" 

And a second later: "Got it! Thanks, G!" 

"Thank Cameron," Claude yells back, and then he digs around in the cabinets for brown paper bags, drops a sandwich and an apple in each one, followed by Dunkaroos and some carrot sticks. It's only then that he realizes he made four lunches instead of three, and he curses quietly under his breath. 

"Thanks, Cam!" 

"S’okay," Cam says, nowhere near loud enough for Caelan to hear, and then he shakes himself out of his sleepy stupor, a look on his face like he’s not quite sure whether or not _s’okay_ is an appropriate response to _thank you._

Caelan comes thundering down the stairs then, and says, "Morning, Dad. Morning, G." 

"Good morning to you, too," Carson says to him like he's picking a fight, and when Caelan goes to sit down, Carson puts his feet up on the open chair. 

Caelan just knocks his feet off and sits down anyway, saying, "I already said good morning to you, loser." 

"Enough of that," Danny says, and after Caelan mutters _sorry,_ he stands up, makes his way around the table to kiss each one of them on the head, even though they all pull away. "I've got to get to work, but be good for your mom, alright?" 

"We will," Caelan says. 

"Don't forget to ask Crosby if we can watch!" Carson reminds him. 

"I'll ask _Sid_ after practice," Danny says, "and if it's okay with him, you can come so long as you stay out of trouble." 

"Well, I mean, I'm an angel," Carson says, and Claude can't help but roll his eyes. 

"Pull the other one," he says, but the boys ignore him and Claude gets no reaction. 

Grabbing his keys and patting his pockets down for his wallet, Danny says to Claude, "Meet you back here before practice?" 

"Yeah," Claude says, and then he holds out a lunch bag. "The Giroux Weekday Special; made an extra on autopilot, if you want it." 

"Sure. Thanks," Danny says, grabbing the bag, and then he calls out one last time, "See you guys Sunday!" 

"Bye, Dad," the three of them chorus with varying levels of enthusiasm, and then Danny's out the door, gone. 

For a second, it's like the calm after the storm, the boys quiet and at the table, everything else around him still. Only then Claude looks around and his eyes catch the clock, and he's reminded that the storm's still there. 

"Alright, go brush your teeth," he says. "We're way late." 

"But I haven't even eaten yet!" Caelan says, getting up anyway. 

"Me either," Cameron reminds him, and it's unfortunate because Claude knows what he has to say. In his defense, he _does_ feel a little bit bad about it. 

"You can eat a Pop-Tart in the car," he tells them, as Caelan and Carson head upstairs, and when a small smile makes its way across Cameron's face, Claude points at him and says, "This is because we're running late, and not because you wouldn't eat your cereal." 

"I know," Cam says. 

"I mean it," Claude stresses. 

"Okay." 

Cameron slides out of his seat and makes for the stairs, and Claude watches him go, just for a second, before he turns around and opens the pantry door. Cam's favorite flavor is blueberry, so Claude grabs three frosted strawberry and pretends like that at all makes a difference. 

 

Afternoon rolls around, and it’s weird for Claude to be breaking routine by not picking up at least one of the boys, even thought it’s routine in and of itself to be passing them off to their mother every other weekend. It’s sort of nice, though, to be able to relax a little and get some errands done, but nice in the kind of way where, although Claude enjoys it, he would never actually go out of his way to ask for it. Claude really _likes_ his job; he gets enough time off as it is—most weekends and hockey nights, and the daytime hours when school is still in session, which lets him take a class every now and then at the local community college, and sort of slowly work towards a liberal arts degree—and so he doesn’t really find himself needing or wanting any more time to himself. Family’s important to Claude, and that’s just how it is. 

Danny gets home about five minutes earlier than he said he would, as Claude is rinsing out the blender from having made their protein shakes. They don’t really have time to eat a proper dinner, already cutting it close as it is—a Briere family trait, apparently—but anything is better than nothing and they can always grab food on the way back from the pond if they’re too hungry to wait until they get home. 

“Two seconds,” Danny says, cutting across the kitchen and heading towards the stairs. He looks both tired and excited for the rest of the night. “Let me just change really quick.” 

“Sure,” Claude says, shrugging even though Danny’s not there to see it. Once he puts lids on their shakes, he goes to toss his and Danny’s skate bags into the trunk, and Danny follows him out a minute later, in the process of pulling a thick sweatshirt on over his head. 

“Good hockey weather,” Danny says, his head tilted back as he looks at the clear sky, already growing dark, his words coming out in little grey puffs of air. He looks so much like Caelan just then—smiling, his jaw dropped just a little, his hair in his face—that Claude almost can’t believe it. The other two have some Sylvie in them, Cam more so than Carson, but Caelan is all Danny, every bit of him, every last feature that he has. Claude likes that, although he can’t really explain why. 

"Yeah," Claude agrees, and then almost as if by unspoken agreement, the two of them climb into the car. 

Claude buckles himself in and then starts the engine, cranking the heat, but by force of habit, he doesn't take the car out of park until Danny has fastened his seatbelt. There's a bit of traffic until they get out onto the highway, just people heading home from work, but it thins out the farther out they get. 

"Long drive?" Danny asks. 

"What, to Marc's?" Claude asks. "I _knew_ you didn't read Crosby's email, you fucking liar." 

Danny laughs a little, embarrassed, and admits, "I _meant_ to, I just—"

He waves his hands in some vague gesture, and then shrugs helplessly. 

"No, I don't blame you," Claude says. "I wouldn't have opened anything from him, either, if I didn't need the directions." And then, because he knows Danny is nothing if not consistent, he asks, “Did you open the email with the, uh—the phone list thing?" 

"If that's the one from a few days ago, I still haven't gotten around to it," Danny says, and Claude sort of wants to chirp him about it, only he doesn't because the fact that Danny would rather play street hockey in the driveway with the boys than respond to an unimportant email from Flower isn't exactly something that he finds chirpable. 

"Don't bother; I already double-checked ours," Claude tells him, and then, because he realizes that Danny missed out on the entire thread, he says, "Max is now a certified skydiving instructor, if you're interested." 

"Oh god, no," Danny says, sincerely and immediately, and Claude can't help but laugh. 

"But he says he can get you a discount." 

"A _discount_?" Danny asks, incredulous. "If I'm skydiving with Max, he should be the one paying _me._ " 

"That's like how Reemer said he'd decorate my casts if I bought him lunch," Claude says. "He took one art class just to meet girls, and ended up dropping out a month into it, anyways." 

Claude doesn't see Danny's face, but Danny breathes out something somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, and the two of them lapse into silence. The signs along the highway are saying that they're getting closer and closer, and now that they're almost there—it's like Claude knew it was hockey season, but he didn't _believe_ it until right now, because he's finding it suddenly hard to sit still, his heart close to pounding in his chest. 

"You're good though, right?" Danny says out of nowhere, and Claude doesn't have to ask, doesn't even have to look at him to know that he's talking about Claude's wrists. "You're not rushing it?" 

"Nah," Claude says, although maybe he is. He doesn't know. He takes one hand off the steering wheel and rotates his wrist as if to prove his point, and while it's still stiff, it's not painful, and stiffness is not what Danny's asking about. 

"Just don't kill yourself over this," Danny says. "We sort of prefer you in one piece, and Bergeron's good enough at playing hurt for the both of you." 

"Danny," Claude says, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye as he drives. He knows he's probably going to regret it later, but the thing is, he really does mean it when he says, "It's my first day back; of course I'm gonna take it easy." 

"Alright," Danny says, and that's that. 

 

The driveway is mostly empty by the time they pull up to Marc’s farmhouse, just Jared and the Nuge playing two-touch out front, and when Danny and Claude get out of the car, the Nuge lunges out to catch the soccer ball and holds it between his hip and the crook of his elbow. 

“Hey,” he says to them. 

“Hey, you fucking cheater,” Jared says, but that’s to the Nuge, and then he turns around, waves at Danny and Claude, and adds another, “Hey.” 

Claude sort of nods his head in response, and then when Jared doesn’t say anything else, he asks, “The pond’s out back?” 

Jared stares at the two of them for a split second longer than is considered normal and then says, “Oh! Right, sorry, I forgot you weren’t here last time. Yeah, yeah, just go around back; I think it’s just Marc and DZ out there, setting up.” 

Danny laughs a little, the kind of laugh like when Cameron says, _Cookies are part of the food pyramid, too,_ and then says, “Avoiding work?” 

“No,” the Nuge tells him seriously, although his mouth twitches like he’s joking. “It’s our job to give directions to people who can’t find the pond.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Claude says, hefting his bag higher up on his shoulder, and then he waves at the two of them again before knocking lightly into Danny and urging him to head around the side of the house. 

The pond’s nice, a lot nicer than the one at Gretzky’s friend’s place, and it’s bigger, too, better for hockey and the number of guys that come out. There are benches lining one side, the ice nice and smooth, and Claude is just so fucking excited for this, for hockey and skating and being with the boys. Winter’s the best, and while this pond isn’t anything different from the more serious skating ponds he’s seen back up in Hearst, it’s still better because it’s _here,_ because it’s _now,_ because it’s _theirs,_ Claude’s and Danny’s just as much as it’s Marc’s and the Staals’. 

Claude turns to Danny, about to say something—although what, he doesn’t know—when Marc and EZDZ walk out from the shed off to the side, carrying a goal between them. Marc’s back is to them, but DZ sees them and he calls out, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” 

Claude just flicks him off, good-naturedly, because he’s found in his experience that that’s the best way to deal with a lot of the guys. 

“Oh, shit,” Danny says next to him. “I forgot my phone in the car. Can you—?”

Claude doesn’t even need him to finish that sentence, just reaches out and grabs the gear bag from Danny’s shoulder, not bothering to watch as Danny jogs back to the car. Odds are that, if the boys actually called, Danny would never hear it ring even when on the loudest setting, not from out on the ice or the benches, but he means well, and so he likes having his phone there with him, just in case. 

“Wanna help with the other one?” Marc calls out to him, shouting back over his shoulder. “I’ll be there in a sec to carry it with you.” 

“Sure,” Claude calls back, and he drops both gear bags on his way to the shed. 

There are some weird things in there—long-distance skis, tennis rackets that were turned into snow shoes, a box filled with life-sized pictures of Jordan’s face, all glued to popsicle sticks, and a black and white sign declaring, _If the grass is greener on the other side, the water bill is higher_ —but the goal is front and center, and so Claude leans against it while he waits. A part of him idly wonders what it would’ve been like to grow up a Staal, so close to so many brothers; Claude only has a sister, and while the Briere kids are like younger brothers to him, they’re _a lot_ younger, and so it’s not really the same thing. Not any better or any worse, just different. 

Claude’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he pulls it out to find a text from Caelan, who just got his first cell phone for his birthday. That was a big deal, and one that caused more problems with the other two than it was probably worth, and Claude tries not to think about it. 

_dont forget to ask the crosbaby if we can come watch!!!_ the text says, and Claude laughs a little under his breath before he starts to text back. 

He only gets as far as _I’m sure he’ll_ when the door opens, and Claude doesn’t bother looking up when he says, “I was starting to think you forgot.” Only then he does look up, and fucking Crosby is standing there, looking pained to even be near Claude, and Claude can’t help the unenthused, “Oh. Crosby,” that slips out. He nods once, not exactly a hello, but not really _not_ one, either. 

“Giroux,” Crosby says, nodding back. He says lightly, “Marc sent me to help with the goal.” 

“Alright,” Claude says, and that’s it. He doesn’t want to say more, doesn’t want to be talking with Crosby for any more than he has to, because Crosby is a underhanded, wrist-breaking fuck who thinks he’s better than the rest of the world, and so they carry the goal out and to the side of the pond in complete silence. 

It’s a lot more crowded out by the pond as they walk by, despite the fact that Claude wasn’t away for more than five minutes, and he can see Kesler and Ladd on opposite ends of the group, Brock Nelson eating a donut, Sharpy mockingly moonwalking past Tazer, flicking the shell of Tazer’s ear as he goes by. Danny’s there, too, talking with Hartsy, and the two of them are watching Claude and clearly trying not to laugh at him. 

When they put the cage down on the pond, it’s not at all lined up with the other cage, and so Claude says, “It’s not centered.” 

“It’s on the line,” Crosby points out, gesturing to the goal line, and Claude rolls his eyes. He can’t fucking stand this idiot. 

“Yeah,” he says slowly, “but it’s not _centered._ ”

“It’s fine,” Crosby says, and then because he’s a fucking asshole, he walks away. “Fix it if you want.” 

Claude wants to call him out on it, but it’s day one and they’ve not even started playing yet, and so instead he mutters under his breath, “Yeah, fuck you, too,” and then moves the goal over; he wasn’t lying when he said it _wasn’t fucking centered._

 

The thing about hockey is that Claude honestly thinks it’s his first love. He’s been living, breathing, and playing hockey for as long as he can remember, on land at first and then on ice as soon as he was old enough and could convince his parents to let him, and that’s it for him. He had tried other sports, been pretty good at soccer, but none of them were the same, none of them got his heart going or the adrenaline coursing. There’s just something about it, about the sound of skates on ice, the banging of sticks, the way the puck slots through the five hole…Claude just likes it, can’t imagine living without it and doesn’t want to have to.

He’s on a line with Prusty and Cam Atkinson the first time he’s on the ice, and they’re not his boys, but they’re alright, and so Claude’s alright with it. He honestly doesn’t know what there could possibly be to complain about, because Crosby’s on the other team, and the first touch of the puck that Claude gets ends in a beautiful goal, a perfect deke against Nabokov that slots the puck just past his right skate. It has Reader hollering and yelling on the bench, his hands on his head in disbelief; for Claude, it’s the perfect start to a perfect night in a perfect hockey winter. 

“Hey, Datsyuk!” Reader yells, and then Hartsy jostles him a bit and corrects, “ _Claude_ syuk!” 

Claude smiles a little and shakes his head to himself, because the goal was pretty nice, but he’s not sure it measures up to Datsyuk, the closest thing they’ve got to a living hockey legend; Datsyuk never left Russia, but he could probably blow them all out of the water if he did. 

“Crazy goal,” Ovie yells, “but Datsyuk eats Frenchies for breakfast!” 

There’s a lot of chirping after that, people yelling overtop of one another as they compare everyone in the league to Datsyuk, but the one thing that sticks out—and the one thing that surprises Claude the most—is when Flower calls out to him from the other cage, “Nice goal, fucker! Holy shit!” That’s like if Danny went nuts over one of Crosby’s goals; yeah, Danny’s his own person, but Claude wouldn’t exactly be having it. 

They all switch lines afterwards, and Claude’s goal is quickly forgotten in favor of watching Tazer and his friend argue as they play. Claude doesn’t know who the guy is, but he’s got soft hands and a good head on the ice, and Claude makes mental note of that, and of finding out who all the new guys are. 

“Fucking _pass to me,_ ” Toews yells. 

“Then get fucking open and _I will,_ ” his friend yells back, not at all shying away from the way Tazer yells. 

“Oh my god,” Biz says. He’s playing, but still loud enough for them to all hear from the bench. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Pyatt says to him, but he’s smiling and joking around, and Biz trips him with his stick. 

Wayne is the linesman, and he clearly sees the tripping, but when he looks over, Biz says, “Tripped over air! Crazy, man. Crazy!” Wayne just waves at Pyatt to play on, and Claude thinks he wouldn’t want to deal with it, either. 

“Hey, G!” someone calls out, and Claude startles, looks down the bench. “ _G!_ ”

Brayden’s leaning forward, his face sticking out from amongst the sticks and the helmets, and when Claude had talked to him earlier, he said he wasn’t going to make it. Claude yells back, “Thought you were picking up Coots from the airport?” 

“Yeah, we came right over,” Brayden says, and he stands up, makes to move down the bench to sit closer. He taps someone else on the helmet with his stick, and after a second, the guy—Coots, as it turns out—gets up, too. “Got here just in time for that deke. No one likes a showoff.” 

“I dunno, man,” Claude says when the two of them get closer. “The bench seemed to like it a lot.” 

“They like rooting for the underdog,” Brayden corrects. “It’s like how everyone cheered Rudy in that movie despite the fact that he kind of fucking sucked.” 

“Thanks,” Claude deadpans, and then Brayden shoves Jack and Wiz down the bench so he can sit down. “Hey, Coots. Good to have you back, man.” 

“Yeah, thanks,” Coots says, scrunching his mouth up to one side and raising his eyebrows in his typical gesture of hello. “The league out in Montreal was a joke, so.” 

“C’mon,” Brayden says, leaning his body into Coots’s. “Show him.” 

Coots rolls his eyes and then smiles wide, and his front teeth are just fucking _gone,_ missing from his head like they were never there to begin with. 

“Holy shit,” Claude says. “I thought my teeth were bad.” 

“Yours _are_ bad,” Danny says as he glides right past them to go set up for a face off. “Hey, Sean.” 

He’s gone before either of them can reply, and they don’t bother yelling after him. Instead, Coots tells Claude, “My mom flipped and said I should’ve been wearing a mouth guard, but at least now I honestly don’t have to.” 

“You get retainer teeth?” Claude asks. He’s been there. 

“Had to,” Coots says, and then when Neon Dion practically destroys Da Costa on the ice, he says, “That was fucking brutal.” 

“Welcome back, eh?” Claude says, half laughing. 

“Yeah,” Coots says. “Shit.” 

“Shit?” Brayden asks. “Fuck, this is nothing,” and then he stands up, hops onto the ice for his shift and drags Coots with him. 

 

Just as the night didn’t begin with the Phaneuf hit, it doesn’t end with it, either; fighting is an integral part of hockey, and one that Claude’s only too familiar with, and so he really shouldn’t be too surprised, especially considering that he knows himself and Crosby and the rest of the guys. 

It's not his fault; he didn't start this fucking thing with Crosby, not tonight or any other night. _Claude_ wasn't the one who broke the other's wrists; _Claude_ wasn't the one being childish about centering the goal. So no, he didn't start it, but he sure as fuck is going to finish it each time it comes up again. He bumps into Crosby when they change lines, cusses at him in French, knocks away his glove when he goes to pick it up. None of it is even all that offensive, just annoying, but Crosby gets redder and redder the angrier he gets, and so Claude thinks the pettiness is worth it. 

"Good to be back?" Danny asks him, the two of them sitting on the bench and panting heavily. 

"Great to be back," Claude corrects, and on the ice, Hallsy chirps Ebs, _That was bush league, bro!_ and Ebs chirps back, _Do you even know what that means?_

Danny levels a look at him, and for the longest time doesn't say anything. Claude's used to it, so he doesn't say anything either, and a minute or so later, Danny finally breaks the silence. 

"Want me to break it up or join in?" he asks, and Claude wants to tell him to do neither, only he doesn't. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says instead. 

"Right," Danny says dryly, and then there's a line change and they're heading back out onto the ice. 

And the thing is, it's not even what Crosby says that makes Claude snap, because he's been called worse, especially in the face-off circle; Claude doesn't know _what_ sets him off, if it even is any one thing in particular, although maybe it doesn't matter. What _does_ matter is how Claude's slamming his stick across Crosby's wrists in retaliation, the puck dropped and forgotten, and then they're fighting, fisting each other's sweaters and throwing punches that have been building up in their bodies for months. 

By the time they're pulled apart, Claude notices that Danny's off to the side, arguing with Dupuis as one of the new guys tries to break them up. Gonch is the one pulling Crosby back, and since Crosby seems to go pretty fucking willingly, Claude taunts, "Yeah, real tough, Crosby, real tough." 

"Easy, G," Hartsy says, his arms still around Claude, pulling him back. "It's done, eh?" And Crosby's still skating away, so maybe it is. 

Only then—

"I can't believe Briere lets you near his kids, you complete psycho," Crosby calls out, and Claude fucking loses it. Crosby can say whatever he wants about Claude, whatever he wants about Danny, and it wouldn't fucking matter, but he does not get to say a single fucking word about their boys, or imply that Claude's not good for them, or that he would ever—that he would _ever_ —

Claude loses his fucking head. He's determined to go over there and rip Crosby to pieces, but Hartsy doesn't let him go, and Crosby skates away, calling out for BizNasty. 

"Hey," Danny says, suddenly right there next to Claude. He's speaking French. "Hey, Claude, calm down, alright? It's done. He doesn't know what he's talking about." 

"He’s a fucking asshole," Claude says vehemently, shrugging out of Hartsy grip, but not going anywhere. There’s a lock of sweaty hair matted down to Danny’s forehead, and Claude wonders idly if his hair looks the same.

"He doesn't know what he's talking about," Danny repeats. 

"I can’t fucking stand that guy.” 

"Claude," Danny says, almost like, _I know,_ almost like that's all he's going to say. But then, after a beat, "C'mon, let Biz patch you up and then let's go home." 

"I'm fine." 

"You've got blood halfway down your face," Danny says, and Claude startles at that, because he hadn't realized. 

Claude shakes his head a little bit—not a _no,_ just a gesture of frustration—and when Hartsy drops his arms, Claude follows Danny to the benches, where Biz is waiting for him with a first aid kit and a Christmas morning smile. 

"I love your work," Biz says to him, helping him sit down even though Claude is fine. "Big fan of how you made Sid look like the victim of a WWE Smackdown." 

"Shut the fuck up," Claude says, but what Biz said still has the desired effect, as Claude can feel the smile that's slowly creeping across his face. 

"Ah!" Biz says, poking a latex-gloved finger roughly into the side of Claude's face as if to say, _I see that smile,_ before snatching his hand back just as quickly. "Oh, shit. Sorry." 

"It's fine," Claude says. "It doesn't—I'm fine." 

" _Fine_ doesn't need stitches, dude," Biz says, pressing gauze lightly against Claude's chin. "Anything else hurt, or is it just the fat lip and the fat chin to go with those fat hips?" 

That gets a laugh out of Danny, who's just standing off to the side, watching them, and Claude shoots him a glare that he doesn't mean. 

"No, that’s everything," Claude says dryly, and then he stills as Biz threads a needle and leans in to sew up his cut. 

"You can squeeze my knee if the pain becomes too great," Biz says, faux-gently, and Claude doesn't bother to respond. When Biz is done, he snips the thread with a pair of tiny scissors and says, "We have to stop meeting like this; you’re making me feel like Doctor Frankenstein. Or Doctor Finklestein, maybe, but that would make you Sally and I don't exactly—"

"Biz," Danny interrupts. "Stop talking." 

"Yes, sir," Biz replies, serious only until he adds a salute and a wink, and then he heads towards the house to go find Crosby, leaving Claude and Danny to pack up and head home. 

 

They don’t talk too much on the car ride back, in part because they’re still buzzing from playing again and in part because Claude honestly thinks Danny doesn’t know what to say about the fight, and feels like he can’t just skip it and talk about something else. Claude doesn’t need him to say anything about it, because what happened was between him and Sidney fucking Crosby, and it’s not like everyone doesn’t already know the story, anyways. The weirdest part about it isn’t even the silence, because that’s as comfortable as anything else with Danny is, but rather how the ride goes by in the blink of an eye in comparison to how long and slow it was going there. Adrenaline had something to do with it, maybe, or just the anticipation. 

It’s only once they’re stopped at a light near their neighborhood that Danny looks over to him, one arm draped over the steering wheel, and says, “So much for taking it easy.” 

He smiles, and there’s nothing condescending about it; Claude laughs a little, too, and resettles the hat on his head, just for something to do with his hands to hide his embarrassment. 

“I know,” he says. “I meant to, but…”

“Yeah, I know,” Danny says. There’s a pause, then, where he looks away from Claude and flicks his eyes to the light before looking back, and Claude is fully expecting Danny to say something reassuring, something about how he’d have been there if Claude had needed him to be, or maybe something about how his wrists are holding up, but instead what he says is, “You’ll beat him next fight.” 

Claude does a double take, freezes for a second because— _what?_

“Oh, _please,_ ” he says, because if _anyone_ won that fight, it was him, because he got in better hits and drew more blood, started it _and_ finished it, and Crosby didn’t fucking stand a chance. And Danny _knew_ that, too, because if Claude was looking bad, Danny really _would’ve_ been there, not to fight it for him but to back him up, and so there’s no way—there’s _no way_ —

“Oh,” Claude says, and he can feel the look of shock and indignation slide right off his face. “You’re fucking with me.” Danny laughs lighter than Claude’s heard in a long while, and Claude just says, “It’s a green light,” the same way he would’ve said, _Asshole,_ and he knows Danny gets it by the way he laughs a little harder. 

Back home, Claude takes his keys back from Danny while they’re still on the driveway, and then he unlocks the front door as quietly as possible before he remembers that the boys are at Sylvie’s. When he realizes they’re not there, he flips on the lights and lets Danny lock up behind them, and leaves his gear bag in the foyer because there’s no one home for him to set an example for and tosses his coat into the hall closet. 

“I hate not having the boys,” Claude says pointlessly, because although it’s nice to drop his gear bag and not have to worry about it until morning, it’s no secret that he’d rather have them home. It’s not that Claude’s threated by Sylvie, because she’s their mother, but he doesn’t like sharing them and doesn’t think he needs to explain that. The Brieres are his family, and Sylvie’s not; it’s as simple as that. 

It makes the fact that he’s leaving them a lot harder to swallow, even though it was his own choice; he may be moving in with Brayden, but Brayden had nothing to do with the decision, and Claude knows that. People his age _should_ spend a few years just living with their best friend, passing out on the couch and arguing over the electricity bill; Claude just wants both, Brayden _and_ the Brieres, and he hasn’t really quite accepted the fact that he can’t somehow _have_ both.

“Mm hm,” Danny agrees, unwinding his scarf and then stuffing it into his jacket pocket before hanging it all up. And then he freezes, just for a second, and says, “They’re going to kill me; I forgot to ask Crosby if they can come watch.” 

“Tell them he’s thinking about it,” Claude says. “Or blame me for it or something. They’ll get over it.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Danny says, but he still sounds vaguely disappointed with himself. And then, “I’m going to shower and then head to bed. See you in the morning?” 

“Yeah,” Claude says. It’s only Friday, and although Claude doesn’t have to be up for the boys, he knows he’ll get up anyways to eat breakfast with Danny. Probably. Maybe. “I’m just gonna crash and I’ll shower in the morning; don’t judge.” 

“We’re already way past that,” Danny jokes, and then the two of them head upstairs. 

Claude’s room is a mess when he gets there, some laundry on the floor—clean and dirty—and a pair of Carson’s shoes, and looking at all that, he doesn’t feel bad adding to the mess. He tosses his hat up towards the head of his bed and then strips off his shirt, drops it onto the floor with his jeans and his socks, and then climbs into bed and crawls under the covers. It’s only once he’s all set to sleep that he realizes he left the overhead lights on, but he’s too fucking tired to really do much about it, and so he just rolls over onto his side and smushes his face between two pillows to block out the light. 

Claude falls asleep almost immediately, but then he’s woken up just minutes later, way too soon for it to be morning. Danny’s hunched over him, wearing just a towel wrapped around his waist, and he’s shaking Claude’s shoulder, his wet hair dripping onto Claude’s cheek the second Claude pulls the pillow away from his face. 

“Nrgh,” Claude says. “Whassat?” 

“Crosby’s on the phone for you,” Danny tells him, and it’s only then that Claude sees that he’s holding the phone, his hand over the receiver. 

The words take a second or two to sink in, because Claude honestly has no clue why Crosby would call him, what he could want to talk about or why he couldn’t wait until they were both at Marc’s again. 

“No,” Claude says, and then he rolls back over. “Tell him to fuck off.” 

“Don’t be a dick,” Danny says. “I doubt he called just to be an asshole.” 

Claude looks over his shoulder at Danny, squinting his eyes against the light and trying to stave off wakefulness, but after a second he gives in, sits up and rubs his eyes. It’s just that—just the one gesture—that tells Danny he’s won. 

“I don’t want to fucking talk to him,” Claude says anyways, just because. 

“I don’t care,” Danny says, and Claude rolls his eyes, sticks out his hand. 

Danny hands over the phone and Claude takes it, puts it to his ear and answers, “What do you want?” as he looks right at Danny. Danny, for his part, just rolls his eyes and then heads back to his own room. 

There’s silence on the other end, long enough that Claude considers just hanging up, and then Crosby says, “You know you listed Danny’s number as your number?” 

“I live here,” Claude says shortly. He’s not sure if he’s angrier with Crosby for calling, or with himself for how the words _I live here_ make something tighten up in his chest.

“Oh. Right.” 

“Look, is that all?” Claude asks. He’s tired and wants to go to back to sleep. “I’m really not in the mood—”

“No,” Crosby says. “I mean, that’s not all. That’s not even why I called. I just wanted to say that I know… that you wouldn’t. It was sort of out of line for me to suggest that, or to even bring them up at all.” 

And that—Claude was honestly not expecting that. It’s kind of a shock for him, to be honest, but it removes a weight from his chest that he wasn’t even aware was there in the first place. He’d thank Crosby for it, or accept Crosby’s apology at the very least, except for how he doesn’t want to, and so instead he says, “Alright.” And then, thinking that maybe that’s too much, or too _not them,_ he adds, “I still fucking hate you,” and then hangs up and places the phone on his end table. 

Claude lies back down and closes his eyes, starts to drift back off into sleep when Danny calls out from down the hall, “Did you ask him about the boys?” 

“I’m not asking him about anything,” Claude shouts back, and, truthfully, he probably wouldn’t have asked even if he _had_ remembered. The boys will understand. 

Danny laughs at him, faintly and from down the hall, and Claude falls asleep. 

 

By the time Claude wakes up in the morning and stumbles downstairs, it’s ten o’clock and Danny’s long since left to run errands. Claude feels sort of bad about it, but it’s his day off and he doesn’t have anything to do before he goes out with Hartsy, and so he just shrugs it off. Danny doesn’t really seem to have minded, either, if the sticky note he left on the coffee maker is anything to go by: _Tried to wake you up but you were dead to the world—d._ The coffee maker is all set up, too, with grounds and water ready to go, and so all Claude has to do is turn it on. Small mercies. 

Standing barefoot in the kitchen, his hip cocked and leaning against the kitchen counter, Claude downs a cup of coffee as soon as it’s brewed and then starts making himself some oatmeal. He should probably hit up the grocery store—not for a big shopping, but just so he and Danny have something to eat over the weekend—and figures that he probably will, maybe on the way home from the gym. Going out with Hartsy means he’ll inevitably be drinking a lot and eating a lot of greasy food, and so although Claude doesn’t want to work out at fucking all, he’s going to anyways, just to kind of even things out. Nothing would be worse than getting on the ice and losing a footrace against Stand Still Gill, or someone equally as slow; Semenko got beat out by Hal a few winters ago, before he left to be a part of Gretzky’s office, and even though he was over forty at the time, the guys still dropped his _Cement Head_ nickname in favor of calling him _Rewind_ —so slow he was skating in reverse. It’s not exactly a fate Claude is looking to recreate for himself, so he places his empty bowl in the sink once he’s done and fills it with water before heading upstairs to change. 

The gym Claude's a member of is bare bones, nothing that's not absolutely necessary, and so it's usually pretty quiet. There's an Equinox a few blocks away that has a steam room and masseuses and stuff, and everyone else seems to just go there except for Claude and this body builder named Rod Brind'Amour, who's almost always at the gym whenever Claude is. It's great because there's never a wait for any of the machines, and it never gets too crowded. Plus, Rod's always willing to spot for Claude so long as Claude spots for him in return, and the owner—this guy named Tony Greco—is always down to help with training and nutrition, too, just out of a passion for fitness, and that's a million times more important to Claude than having overpriced shampoo in the showers. 

It's only once he's in the car and on the way to Greco Lean and Fit that Claude gets a text from Hartsy, saying, _Change of plans for tonight. No backing out and no hating me, either._

 _Going to the gym,_ Claude texts back at a red light, instead of asking what Hartsy's up to; he'll find out later, either way, and isn't exactly sure he even wants to know. _Don't have the time to hate you._

 _Even better,_ Hartsy writes. _Say hi to Rod the Bod for me._

Claude rolls his eyes and doesn't answer, in part because he doesn't have anything to say, and in part because the light turns green, and he's gotten in the habit of not texting while driving ever since the accident happened. He remembers so clearly getting that phone call, the way his heart leapt into his throat, how his knees almost buckled as he walked out of the living room and into the kitchen, away from Caelan and Carson so that he could ask, _And Cam, is he—?_ He remembers dropping the boys off next door and driving to the hospital, and he remembers the scratches on Cam's face from the shattered glass, the hunch in Danny's shoulders as he said, _I was just—I was tired,_ the pictures of the totaled car, the smell of disinfectant and the sickly sweet cherry taste of the lollypop that Cam insisted he try, and they're both fine, that's the important part—they're _fine_ —but Claude will never do anything that might make someone he loves feel like that, or have to remember things like that. It's not worth it, and nothing is. 

When Claude finally gets to the gym, Tony's at the front desk drinking a protein shake and messing around with a hand gripper. He jerks his chin and smiles in hello, and then, looking at all of Claude's layers, he asks, "This your first winter?" 

"It's below freezing!" Claude defends himself, and he unwinds his scarf, tosses it into one of the cubbies lining the wall. Tony just laughs at him. 

"Well, a good workout'll warm you right up, you fucking wimp," Tony says, because working out is Tony's cure for everything, the common cold and sleepless nights and hangovers. "What's on the schedule for today?" 

"I dunno," Claude says, because he never goes in with a plan. He takes off his snapback and combs his hair back with his fingers so that when he puts his cap back on, it'll keep his hair off his face. "Kettlebells, maybe." 

Tony nods, more of a sign that he heard more than any sort of approval, and then he says, "We got a new guy in right now." 

Claude pauses, and then says, "Wait. What?" 

"I _know,_ " Tony says, like he was just as shocked. "I don't know what his deal is, but he's in the back, working out with Rod." 

"He one of Rod's competition guys?" Claude asks, because that's happened before; Rod's brought in a friend or two from his fitness competitions. 

"Nah," Tony says, shuffling through papers on his desk. "The guy's pretty jacked, but came in wearing a suit. Jagr, I think? I have his paperwork here somewhere..." 

"Dunno him," Claude says. "But I'll let you know if I hear anything." 

"Thanks, brother," Tony says, but he says it in a way that conveys how it doesn't really matter much to him either way; it's just idle curiosity, for the both of them. 

When Claude finally talks to the new guy, he turns out not to be at all what Claude was expecting, and he'll admit to that much. At first, Claude's not anywhere near Jagr and Rod, because he's warming up on a bike, but once he finishes with that and heads over into the weight room, they're all sort of in the same area, and it's hard to avoid each other completely. 

"You're kidding me if you think we're done now," Rod says to Jagr, and Claude doesn't know what prompted that, just nods in hello as he passes by on his way to the kettlebells, picking up a light one just to loosen up with. 

"Please," Jagr scoffs, and then he grabs Claude's attention by looking at him in the mirror and saying, "Hey— _hey._ Do I need a fucking workout? Forty years old." 

"Uh," Claude says, and when Jagr flexes his bicep, Claude looks between him and Rod, more than a little lost. "You look good." 

Jagr laughs at that, a full-bellied laugh that makes his eyes crinkle up, and he says, "Thank you; I know." 

"Stop feeding his ego," Rod says. 

"Don't listen to him," Jagr tells Claude right afterwards, waving a hand and shushing Rod, and when Rod lies down on the weight bench, Jagr moves behind his head to spot him, still talking. "It's not ego if it's true. Eight reps, let’s go." 

"You're only proving my point," Rod tries, and then he wraps his fingers around the weight bar and unracks it. 

"No, I'm not," Jagr says. "I'm not going to be shy; I work hard to look like this, and so do you, and so does your friend." He pauses for a second and then adds, sort of out of nowhere, "Take this, for example: I was very athletic when I was younger, played a lot of sports. When I played against other six-year-olds, I was great; when I played against ten-year-olds, I was average. My father wanted me to play where I was average, and by doing so, when age evened out, I was better than all the other kids. If you spend your whole life where you’re average, you know when finally become great, and you realize that pretending otherwise is just an insult to everyone around you." 

And the guy’s eccentric, Claude will admit that much, but he likes the way Jagr said he always keeps pushing for more—to be better. It makes Jagr sound like Claude's kind of guy, and so for a second Claude thinks about asking Jagr if he wants to try his hand at hockey. Only then Rod says, "And you're _average_ as the CEO of a top Fortune 500 company?" and Claude rethinks it because—holy shit. Claude doesn't even have enough money to buy a new laptop; what the fuck is Jagr doing at a gym like this, when he probably has a nicer one in his own apartment building? Guys like that don't have time for things like hockey, and that's why they make good CEOs. 

"No," Jagr says, "but I started off average and worked my ass off, and now I'm the best. If you want to be better than everyone else, you have to work harder than everyone else, and there's no other secret to it. In the office, the gym, the bedroom—doesn't matter, it's all the same." 

There's a pause after that where Claude has no clue what to say, but that's broken when Rod finishes with his set and sits up, wiping his face with the bottom hem of his shirt. 

"I think he's trying to tell you to man up and use a heavier weight, Claude," Rod says. 

Jagr just laughs, and neither of them listen when Claude tries to explain that he's still loosening up, still stretching, and that twenty-six pounds isn't his fucking _one-rep max._

 

Danny’s home by six-thirty that night, and even after he takes a shower, he refuses to go out with Claude and Hartsy. 

“You really need to cut it out with this, like, _I’m an old person_ shit,” Claude says, because that’s usually what it is. He’s lying on top of the comforter on Danny’s bed, kind of just hoping to peer pressure Danny into admitting that he wants to come, or just into agreeing to come so that Claude will get out of his room and leave him to get dressed in peace, but that’s not going so well. “Hartsy’s thirty-one.” 

“It’s not that,” Danny says, one hand holding his towel around his waist and the other shaking water out of his hair. He looks sheepish. “I’ve got a date.” 

And that—

“Oh,” Claude says, surprised, because Danny doesn’t have a lot of those. He does this thing where he refuses to date if the boys are around, and at first Claude thought that maybe Danny didn’t realize the boys would be okay with it, that the boys _wanted_ him to date and be happy, but then Sylvie remarried and Danny got really drunk, and Claude realized that _of course_ Danny knew all of that already; no one knows the boys better than Danny does, and even then—even when Claude had only been with them for eight months—Claude should have realized that. 

_I haven’t been in love with her for a long time,_ Danny had said as Claude dumped him on his bed, _but I really meant it when I married her._

Claude hadn’t known what to say, so he went into the bathroom and took the glass that Danny left on the counter and filled it up at the tap before walking back into the bedroom and placing it on the end table. Danny was watching him, and so Claude said, _I know you did,_ and, _We’ll get you back out there,_ and, _The boys just want you to be happy, you know, whatever makes you happy._

Danny closed his eyes and hadn’t said anything for the longest time, so long that Claude thought he had fallen asleep, but eventually, just as Claude was shutting out the lights, Danny said, _You guys are the best thing to ever happen to me._

 _We love you, too,_ Claude had said, and then he ducked out into the hallway, his cheeks burning as he shut the door behind himself. 

Propping himself up on his elbows and crossing his legs at the ankles, Claude asks, “So who’s the lucky lady that got through the first round of the application process?” 

“Funny,” Danny says, and he opens his closet, goes through his shirts with one hand. “It’s just someone I met at that new coffee shop where Nathalie’s used to be.” 

“Oh,” Claude says, sort of just a filler while he figures out what else to say. “Well, I’m sure she’s great.” 

“Even if it’s a disaster, it’s still better than looking at you and Hartsy all night,” Danny says, and Claude sniffs. 

“See if I help you pick out a tie.” 

Danny actually laughs at that one, a bark of laughter that sounds surprised out of him, and he says, “I’m not so sure I look very good in plaid, anyways.” 

“You don’t,” Claude tells him, and then he walks out of the room like that’s somehow sending a message, Danny’s laughter following him all the way to the top of the staircase. 

In the end, though, Claude does help Danny with his tie—deciding on no tie at all, and _fuck,_ but Claude forgot how long it’s been since Danny’s done this—and then when Danny’s gone, he just sort of lazes about eating Fritos until Hartsy double-honks from the driveway to signal that he’s waiting. 

Claude grabs his coat from the hall closet and throws it on, and then he pats down his pants pockets just to double check that he’s got his wallet and phone. When he opens the front door, the cold air hits him hard in the face, and he pulls his coat tighter around his body, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he locks up, just to keep warm. 

He jogs across the driveway, cutting across the streak of light from Hartsy’s headlights, and when he almost slips and falls on a patch of ice, he thinks he can hear Hartsy laughing from inside the car. 

When Claude opens the passenger-side door, Hartsy _is_ laughing, and so Claude says by way of greeting, “You’re an asshole.” 

“Hey, now, don’t be like that,” Hartsy says, and he throws the car into reverse before Claude’s even got his door shut. 

“The Bod sends his love; he says no, but try asking him again when Jupiter is in retrograde,” Claude deadpans, trying once, twice, three times to buckle his seatbelt. Rod and Hartsy don’t even know each other, but Hartsy’s kind of obsessed with him, anyway, and wants to make a documentary of Rod’s life, showcasing how Rod’s passion for fitness got him off the streets and off drugs, and onto a new path in life. Honestly, the only reason Claude doesn’t actually ask if Rod would be interested in doing it is because he’s pretty sure that Hartsy made it all up, and that Rod’s actually the product of a one hundred percent boring, suburban upbringing. 

“The Bod,” Hartsy says, shaking his head fondly. “And I see you're spending a bit too much time with Bryz.” 

Claude laughs and says, “Trust me, I don’t mean to. He called me last week to talk about Mercury or something, and like, tigers on vodka bottles, and I don’t think I actually understood any of what he said.” Claude reaches forward to redirect the air vents in an attempt to get rid of the chill in his chest, and then asks, “Okay, so what’s the plan?” 

There’s a brief pause before Hartsy says nonchalantly, “Well. Claude, you know how sometimes you have a friend that’s really great—the kind of guy who’d rival Alexander, or like, Arnold Schwarzenegger—and you’d have their back whenever, on the ice or off it, because you _know_ they’d have yours—”

“ _No,_ ” Claude groans, slouching in his seat, because he knows stalling when he sees it, and knows what it means. 

“Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’m not gonna tell you,” Hartsy says. “Just know that you’re gonna hate it, and remember that I’m your friend and you owe me.” 

"I _owe_ you?" Claude says. "Hey, if we're counting favors now—"

"You're right," Hartsy interrupts. "Let's not." 

Claude laughs and shoves Hartsy's elbow off of the center console with his own, and then grips onto the edge in case of retaliation. "So where are we going?” he asks again. 

“Just some…bar,” Hartsy says evasively, and so Claude blinks at him for a second. 

“I know I went to a lot of gay bars when Schenner was figuring everything out, but I’m not actually—”

“I’m not taking you to a gay bar,” Hartsy says dryly, and there’s a slight curl at to the corner of his mouth that does not bode well, and almost has Claude wishing that Hartsy _was_ taking him to The Manhandler, instead of whatever he's got planned. 

When they finally pull into the lot and park their car, Claude sees why Hartsy was so tight-lipped with the details: in neon orange lighting over the entrance is a sign proclaiming, _Sing Sing Karaoke and Sushi Bar._

“No way,” Claude says, shaking his head and not making any move to get out of the car. “Not a chance.” 

“What?” Hartsy asks, like he honestly doesn’t get it, even though Claude _knows_ that he does, because they’ve known each other for long enough. “Why not?” 

“I don’t sing,” Claude reminds him. 

“It’s _karaoke,_ ” Hartsy shoots back. “No one does.” 

Claude leans back and rests his head on the headrest, causing the brim of his hat to press awkwardly into the seat and lift a lot of the cap off his head. Looking out at the sign, he holds his breath for a second, before letting it out in one big rush and saying, “This is bullshit.” 

Hartsy smiles and whoops, reaching out across the center console to shake Claude’s shoulder roughly a few times, and he hollers, “ _Yeah,_ G!” as if Claude scored a sick bottle knocker instead of only just agreed to public humiliation. 

Claude pulls away and hunches in on himself, mostly just for show, and says, “Stop it. Get outta here.” He undoes his seatbelt and climbs out of the car, fixing his hat along the way, and he leaves his coat in the back seat even though it’s cold out and supposed to snow. Maybe that’s Caelan rubbing off on him, or maybe it’s just the easiest way to make sure he doesn’t leave it behind in the bar; he doesn’t know, and doesn’t really care. 

“Claude Giroux,” Hartsy says as they cross the parking lot, “you’re my hero.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Claude says, and they head inside. 

 

The bar turns out to be kind of exactly what Claude would’ve expected from a place called _Sing Sing Karaoke and Sushi Bar_ : people getting drunk on beer, singing poorly, and eating more tempura and Philly rolls than he’d probably recommend. Hartsy tells him about his newest project while they cram in at the bar for a drink—“The characters meet at a place like this, right, like—you know, too much going on, not enough sobriety, maybe a case of roundworm or two”—and then they take over a booth in the back. 

For the first drink or so, it actually goes pretty well: Hartsy spends most of his time pouring over the song book and scribbling his choices down on little scraps of paper, but he doesn’t make Claude pick one himself or anything, and so Claude just sits there and listens to terrible singers do their thing. Honestly, it’s not that different from the time he and Danny went to a local country show that almost made him bleed from the ears, only now Claude has the satisfaction of knowing that at least he didn’t pay for tickets, and made Hartsy take care of his cover charge. 

“Hey,” Hartsy says, grabbing Claude’s attention from the stage change. “How about _You Shook Me All Night Long?_ ” 

“Yeah,” Claude says, shrugging. “Have at it.” 

“No, I meant for—” Hartsy says, but then he cuts himself off, staring at the stage that’s a little behind Claude and just off to the side. “Oh, shit.” He sounds surprised. 

“What?” Claude asks, and then he turns around. 

Up there, on the little stage and just starting the intro to _The Boy Is Mine,_ are Segs and Marchy. 

“So you know somebody named—?” Segs asks in falsetto, laughing through it while Marchy takes the role of Monica way too seriously. From somewhere in the audience, someone shouts, _Ow ow!_ before Segs continues, “You know his name.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Marchy says, in what is probably supposed to be a sultry voice. “ _Definitely,_ I know his name.” 

Claude turns to Hartsy, unable to look away from the stage, and he says, “I’m actually not that surprised.” 

“Mostly I meant that they’re here the same night as us,” Hartsy clarifies, and when Marchy tries to dance, Hartsy wolf-whistles with his fingers in his mouth. 

Claude can tell the exact moment that they’re seen, because Segs tosses an arm around Marchy’s shoulders and points, and they lose the thread of the song in favor of shouting a long, drawn-out, “ _Heeeey!_ ”

Claude and Hartsy salute them with their beers, and then the two of them get back to singing, Marchy following Segs around the stage, one hand on his hip, the other out in front of him with one finger up, drunkenly shouting, “Must you do the things you do? Keep on acting like a fool.” 

“This is one of those moments where I don’t know whether it’d be better to be blind or deaf,” Hartsy shouts over the music. 

“ _Dead_ is the word you’re looking for,” Claude shouts back, and he kills off his beer as Hartsy laughs, not so much because it was particularly funny, but just because this whole situation is ridiculous. 

When the song ends a painful two minutes later, Marchy and Segs head over to where Claude and Hartsy are sitting, stopping only long enough along the way to grab Brownie and Freddy Bender from a table filled with pretty hot girls.

"Dudes!" Segs shouts as soon as he gets close enough. "What are the odds?" 

"Move over," Marchy says, and he gives Claude's should a shove, pushing him deeper into the booth until there's enough room for all six of them to fit. 

"Hey," Hartsy says. "You guys sounded really great up there." 

Segs takes that a lot more seriously than it was meant and says, "We _were._ " 

"I mean," Marchy says, "we're no Freddy Bender, but." 

"Acting crazy, that’s just what we do," Segs sings in falsetto, strumming an air guitar until Freddy laughs and slaps his hands, telling Segs to knock it off. "What about you guys? Karaoke?" 

"Yeah," Hartsy says. "I put in about ten different songs. None for my man, G, here, though." 

And that—Claude should have figured that that would be a red flag with Segs and Marchy, but he never could have predicted just how personally offended they'd look. 

"You have to," Marchy says. 

"It's, uh," Claude says, stumbling over the words while he tries to think up a polite way to say, _You couldn't pay me enough._ "It's not really my thing." 

Segs laughs loudly, his cheeks flushed and crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes, and he says, "After a sake bomb or two, karaoke is _everybody's_ thing." 

Claude tries to fight it, honestly he does, but before he knows what's going on, Hartsy's submitting some songs for him, and then Segs comes back with the drinks, and even though Claude is still trying to get a grip on the situation, it's not looking too good. 

"C'mon," Segs says, sliding a pint glass and a shot across the table to everyone. Then he holds his own shot glass up above his head and yells, "Ichi! Ni! San! _Sake bomb_!" and drops the sake into his beer. 

"Tomorrow morning, I want you to remember that I said this was a bad idea,” Claude says, and he knocks his ankle against Hartsy’s under the table before joining in and downing his drink with the rest of them. 

Marchy slings one arm around Claude's shoulders and, when Claude wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, cheers, "That's my boy! I knew him when he was bleached blonde!" 

"No, you didn't!" Segs says, laughing, but he's talking to Claude, and not to Marchy. 

"Ugh," Claude says. "I don't want to talk about it. It never happened!" 

Brownie laughs and says, "Like Marchy's tat." 

"Hey! Whoa!" Marchy yells, at the same time as Segs shouts, "'Ey, c'mon!" 

Hartsy put his hands out in the middle of the group, trying to quiet them down, saying, “Wait, wait, wait!” And when that doesn't really work, he just shouts overtop, "I want to hear this story!" 

"It's barely a story," Freddy deadpans. 

"Fuck you, it is too a story," Marchy says, good-naturedly. He points at Segs, and then explains, "I got this asshole to tattoo me, and he misspells _champion._ " 

Hartsy barks out a laugh that has Marchy lifting up his shirt to show off his ribs, and Segs waves it off, saying, "Bro, you _know_ I didn't finish college." 

" _Bro,_ " Marchy responds, but whatever he's planning on saying next, he doesn't get a chance to say, because _Thank God I'm a Country Boy_ is playing next, and that's Claude's song. 

To be honest, at this point, it doesn't seem like that bad of an idea. 

 

The next morning, Danny kicks Claude awake way earlier than he has the right to, saying, “It’s a quarter to nine, if you still want to head out to the pond.” 

“Nrgh,” Claude says, rolling over and mushing his face into the pillow, his head pounding and his mouth filled with cotton. Danny’s holding a coffee mug, one that Cameron had decorated for his birthday last year, and Claude really, really wants it to be meant for him. 

“Coffee’s waiting for you downstairs,” Danny says, as if he knows what Claude’s thinking. He probably does, too, because Danny’s had his moments, and seen Claude at even worse than this; neither of them are strangers to helping the other through a hangover just because they’ve got three boys under the age of fourteen. He wonders what Brayden will be like as a roommate when Claude’s hungover; he’ll probably just leave Claude to die and go make himself some Eggos.

Claude lies there for a minute longer and sort of vaguely debates just going back to sleep; it would be so, so easy, because his head is pounding and his limbs feel heavy, but instead he rolls over, pulling his sheets up over his shoulders as he squints at Danny through heavy-lidded eyes. He doesn't know what the fuck convinced him it would be a good idea to keep drinking even after the sake bomb, or to—oh, god—sing _karaoke._ Claude groans to himself, vague memories in his head of going up to the makeshift stage, of singing country song after country song as Hartsy danced to support him, of Brownie exhausted and slouched over Segs's lap back at the booth, and of Marchy at the bar, _Four shots—no, five. Or—you know what? How much for the bottle?_

Danny’s smiling down at him, already completely dressed and his hair still slightly damp from his morning shower, and Claude hates him. 

“I quit,” Claude croaks out through a dry mouth, and Danny laughs a little, the kind of laugh where he’s more amused by Claude than by what Claude had said. It’s soft enough that Claude’s head doesn’t pound any harder at the sound, but that doesn’t make it any less insulting that Danny’s essentially kicking him while he’s down. 

“Hockey? Or watching my kids?” 

“Both,” Claude says. “Everything.” 

Danny laughs again and says, “I’ll see you downstairs. I’ve got your gear in the car; just get dressed and you can sleep on the ride.” 

“Alright,” Claude says, and even though Danny leaves, he still lies in his bed for another ten minutes. He feels sick, but the kind of sick where he knows that nothing will come of it, and that he’ll feel better as soon as he gets some coffee in him. Still, even the idea of that isn’t enough to get him moving, and he just lies there on his side, until Danny hollers at him up the stairs and says that if they’re leaving, they’re leaving in five. 

Claude throws on whatever clothes he can find, whatever looks clean and warm, and then he stumbles downstairs in mismatched socks and a bright orange shirt. Danny’s sipping coffee and reading the paper at the kitchen table like a fucking adult, and the only thing that keeps Claude from chirping him is knowing how Danny looks during the week, or on weekends when the boys are home, when everything’s crazy and rushed, the five of them racing to get ready. On those days, Danny doesn’t look calm at all; he looks flustered and frazzled, but still somehow happier than Claude ever sees him otherwise, happier even than when he’s on the ice, and that’s how it _should_ be, Claude thinks. People _should_ be at their happiest when they’re with their family.

“You feed the dogs?” Claude asks, and as he does, Zoey and Zora come snuffling around by his feet. He reaches down, pats them both a few times on their sides. 

“Yeah,” Danny says, and he folds up the business section. “Ready to go?” 

“I guess,” Claude says. 

Danny hands him a travel mug without a word, and then the two of them head to the front door for their jackets. Claude digs around in the closet until he finds an old, beat-up Carhartt shoved towards the back, and then grabs one of Caelan’s knit caps from the top shelf, cramming it on his head as he walks out the door and lets Danny lock up behind them.

In the car, Claude crawls into the passenger seat and struggles to stay awake. It’s fucking freezing, and his breath is visible in the car as he tries once, twice, to get his seatbelt buckled. Hungover hockey will be interesting, to say in the least; hopefully he won't be sick on the ice, but even if he is, he'll be far from the first.

Danny starts the car, and they don’t say anything for the time that it takes to back out of the driveway and pull down the block. Claude's head spins a little as the car starts moving, and he slouches farther down in his seat so he can comfortably tilt his head back against the headrest, slipping his bare fingers underneath his thighs for warmth before realizing that having his palms flat against the cold leather of the seat isn’t helping things. He settles for tucking his fingers between his arms and his ribs, almost in his armpits.

“You can go back to sleep,” Danny says. “I’ll wake you when we’re there.”

“Then we’ll never get there,” Claude points out with his eyes closed, and Danny laughs a little.

“I've got the GPS.”

“Yeah, I know,” Claude says. “But s’not fair, if you have to drive.”

“It’s fine,” Danny says. “Claude, I’m serious; go back to sleep.”

Claude flops his head over to the side to get a good look at Danny, and Danny’s just staring out at the road, wearing more layers than Claude had even thought to put on. He looks a little tired, too, but not like Claude is, and so Claude shrugs, shuts his eyes again.

“Alright,” he says. “Wake me when we’re there. Or if you need anything.”

And then he’s out like a light, the low sound of Danny’s GPS easing him back to sleep, somewhere between one breath and the next.

 

It's only an extra forty of so minutes that Claude gets to sleep, but it somehow makes all the difference, and by the time he's being shaken awake at Marc's farm, he feels like a new person. The fog in his head is gone, and he swigs some Gatorade to get rid of his cottonmouth, and then he's good to go. 

It's crowded by the time they finally shoulder their gear and head around back, a lot of the guys milling around and getting ready. The goals are already in place, Gillies on the ice wearing Bobrovsky's mask as he tries to block some shots, and when Claude walks past, there must be some dispute, because Wiz is celebrating with an over-the-top celly and Gillies is throwing down his mask, pointing to JMFJ on the sideline for a second opinion. 

"Goal's good," Jack says, and Gillies lets out a loud string of self-censored curses, ending with _un-fudging-believable._ Wiz keeps dancing. 

Claude scans the crowd and sees Brayden and Coots sitting near Prusty and Boyle, and so he heads over, knocking shoulders with Danny as he goes, just to herd him in the right direction. 

"Check it out," Brayden calls out when Claude gets close, a shit-eating grin on his face. "It's our resident country singer!" 

" _Hartsy,_ " Claude curses under his breath, dropping his bag unceremoniously to the ground. 

"Hey," Danny says, sounding like he's going to defend Claude. "The clips I was sent had some pop songs in there, too," and as Brayden and Coots break out into laughter, Claude shakes his head and refuses to look at them, his cheeks burning even though he's seen the three of them do far dumber shit than that. 

"Oh, hey, though," Coots says, clearly changing the subject, something for which Claude is eternally grateful. "What's the deal with Crosby's boyfriend?" 

"What do you mean?" Danny asks, already pulling up his skate socks. 

Coots jerks a thumb over his shoulder, and when Claude looks, he can see Crosby standing uncomfortably with Ovie and some tall, dark-haired guy that Claude's never seen before. 

"I talked to Jared," Coots tells them with a shrug, "and he says they're dating or something. I don't know; I've never seen him before." 

"Oh," Danny says. "I think he works at that coffee shop down on like Hudson and Fifth." 

"Nathalie's?" Coots asks. 

"Yeah," Danny says. "Or, well, now it's something else, but yeah." 

"Well, this is bullshit," Brayden says, and then Claude sees him elbow Coots gently in the ribs. " _We're_ supposed to be the hockey power couple; they're stealing our thunder." 

"You're dreaming," Coots tells him, shaking his head, although a small smile creeps up on his face once Brayden looks away. He lets his hand fall off his lap so that it's pressing against Brayden's, and Claude pretends not to see it, because Coots is pretty private about that sort of thing. 

Next to them, Prusty says something that makes Boyle let out a loud laugh, and even though Reader walks over to say hi, Claude gets distracted and finds himself listening in on how Brian responds. 

"He does not," Brian says, but Prusty just laughs a little. 

"It's true!" he says. "It's true. Ask him yourself." 

"Such a fucking liar," Brian continues under his breath, and then he turns around, shouts out, "Yo, Hal!" 

Hal Gill's about half the pond-length away, and he spins awkwardly in a circle trying to figure out who called him. Brian waves to get his attention, and then Hal waves back and walks over. 

"What's up, BriBrows?" he asks, the kind of _what's up_ that is clearly looking for an answer. 

Next to him, Danny shifts and knocks into Claude as he hunches over and digs through his skate bag, and just past him, Brayden smacks Reader's hand away from his face. 

"Random question," Brian says. "What dish would you bring to a potluck?" 

Hal immediately responds with, "Mashed potatoes with butter and cinnamon—like, a sweet potato," only to furrow his eyebrows and, after a pause, ask, "Wait. What time of year is it? Is it in the morning? Is it—when are we doing it?" 

“Uh,” Brian says, and even Claude can tell by the sound of his voice that he’s already on the verge of laughter. “I don’t know. We’re not _actually_ —”

“Well, if you’re gonna ask questions like that, please come with more details,” Hal says, seemingly pretty distressed over the question. “Like, I’d like to do the sweet potatoes, that would be nice, but I’m not gonna bring that in the summer; that’s just silly. So maybe, like, a cucumber and tomato salad with onions? That would be in the summer, but it would be foolish to bring that to breakfast. Maybe eggs benedict, I love eggs benedict. I could bring that in—well, winter, for breakfast—brunch—” 

It's ridiculous, and Claude rolls his eyes, shoves his last shin pad in so he can get to taping his socks. Danny hands him a roll of tape before he even asks for it, and then he quirks an eyebrow. 

"He's up there with Bryz when it comes to having a bizarre thought process," Danny says, and Claude smiles. 

"Huskies, you know," he says, joking, not even needing to finish the thought. 

Danny smiles, too, but instead of responding, he gets up and takes both of their sticks over to the main pile, where everyone's waiting to see who has to ref. Claude thanks him as he goes and sticks around to finish up with his gear, quiet and just listening to the shouts and laughter around him until puck drop. 

 

Once they get out on the ice, everything goes pretty smoothly. Claude doesn’t score or anything, but he has a good time at it, and there really aren’t any fights. Crosby doesn’t even seem to remember that Claude’s there, he’s so wrapped up in playing some weird game of hockey chicken with his boyfriend—Malkin—and honestly, it’s like Christmas came early for Claude; normally, he and Crosby would just be poking at each other and poking at each other, relentlessly, again and again, until one of them snapped and everyone else had to intervene. 

“It’s like my baby is all grown up, or something,” he overhears Max tell Flower, the two of them watching as Malkin meets Crosby at center ice to brag about his admittedly sick goal. Flower barks out a laugh. 

“Yeah, and we got stuck being chaperones; it fucking sucks,” Flower says. “I feel uncomfortable.” 

“People would pay good money to be in your shoes right now,” Max informs him. “Sid’s—you know—an eligible bachelor.” 

Jordan Staal skates over then, bumping into Max to stop himself from gliding past. Then he gives Max another little shove that goes largely ignored, and says, “Don’t be weird, Talbo.” 

The next thing Claude knows, they’re talking about the likelihood that Crosby’s going to go home and get some (“Zero percent,” Flower insists, “and if I could go lower, I would.”) and that’s when Claude checks out, because he doesn’t care, and his shift is over. So Claude steps off the ice, letting Danny's line hop on, and then he goes to grab a seat on the bench, wedging himself between Brayden and Hagelin. 

"What, no _excuse me_?" Hags asks lightly, sliding over as much as possible so that Claude's no longer sitting half on top of him. "I should toss the gloves, just for that." 

"Next fight, I'll make sure to call shotgun on you," Claude offers, and Hags laughs. 

"So generous," he says, and then something out on the ice catches his attention and he's cupping his hands around his mouth, shouting, "Are you even trying? You made that look easy for him, DZ. _Easy_!" 

"Everyone's a critic who's sitting on their ass," DZ calls back. It's funny, and some of the guys laugh, but Biz starts up an old chant that's basically just him and Pyatt taunting, _EZDZ! EZDZ!_ and so DZ rolls his eyes, says, "Yeah, yeah, fuck you," and sets up for a face-off. 

Brayden nudges him then, and Claude knows what’s coming before he even says anything. 

“You tell Danny yet?” 

“No,” Claude says, breathing heavily from the last shift, his eyes following the puck. “I don’t—how do you break something like that, you know? I can’t just drop that bomb over dinner.” 

“G,” Brayden says, and then he pauses, gathers his thoughts. “Look, if I thought it was a bad idea, or something you didn’t actually want, I’d say so. But they’re getting older, and you’re getting older, and it’s not the end of the world if you get your own place; you’re not their dad, you’re their babysitter.” 

“Mansitter,” Claude responds, a kneejerk reaction from having dealt with Caelan for years. 

“What the fuck ever,” Brayden says, looking at Claude like his entire existence doesn’t make sense. “The point is, you’ll still see them all the time, you’ll just—you know—not live with them.” 

Claude wants to say, _I know,_ or, _I want to,_ or, _I’m going to tell him,_ but he doesn’t say any of those things. It’s not that he doesn’t want to get an apartment with Brayden, it’s just that it’s hard to tell his family that he’s leaving, even though he gets that he’s not really _leaving._ And although neither Danny nor the boys have ever even so much as _hinted_ at it, Claude still knows that moving out would be the best for everyone: he’d have his own place with Brayden, where he can bring people home and stay up late and leave rinsed out beer bottles lined up on the counter next to the sink, and the kids will have more freedom, more responsibility, the boys will all have their own bedrooms… They’re not old enough to not need Claude, not yet, but they’re old enough to not need him there every minute of every day, and Claude’s not so blind that he doesn’t see that. He’s old enough that he doesn’t need them like that anymore, either, and that’s the point. 

“You’re right,” Claude says finally, because Brayden is, and Claude knows it; getting a place together was as much his idea as it was Brayden’s. “Plus, I hear Luke’s looking for a roommate, so—”

Brayden shoves Claude hard enough that he almost falls off the bench, and he says, “Luke Schenn is the lesser Schenn, and we _both_ fucking know that.” 

Claude laughs and is about to respond, but then Danny scores a sick one-timer, and from somewhere down the bench, Vanek yells, “The Cookie Monster goes top shelf!” and Claude loses his train of thought. 

The _Cookie Monster._ That’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. Claude figures that maybe it has to do with something that happened years ago, back when Danny lived in Buffalo didn’t even know who Claude was, but that doesn’t change anything. It’s still ridiculous, and Claude’s still gonna let Danny have it. 

Claude laughs a little to himself and then slides down the bench as they switch lines, his ears picking up snippets of Eric explaining what icing is to some new kid named Skinner. Claude’s heart is still racing from his last shift, but his head is ready for another, and so he puts everything else—moving out and Danny’s nickname and the errands he needs to run before the boys are dropped back home—out of his mind for the time being and just watches the ice. 

 

The next morning, Claude and Danny go grocery shopping before the boys come home, just to get ready for the week. Claude's sort of got a list in mind—things like cold cuts and baby carrots and snack pack pudding cups—but for the most part, he's just winging it, and grabbing things as he passes them in the store. 

"What about BLTs?" Danny asks, holding some tomatoes. "I can make the... toast." 

"Incredibly helpful," Claude says. "But I guess grab a few, and if we don't use them, I'll make a tomato and mozzarella salad, or something easy like that." 

Danny laughs and says, "If you didn't live with us, we'd probably starve to death," and Claude smiles back until he remembers that he's moving out, and then he just feels like shit. It's stupid, because it's not like Danny can't cook; he can, he's just not great, and so it's not like they need Claude. They want Claude, sure, and that feels really good, but they don't need him. 

It's all just made worse by the fact that Danny doesn't seem to see it coming. Danny doesn't know, and Claude almost can't believe it because Danny always just _knows,_ everything about him; it annoyed Claude for so long, the way Danny just _knew_ when he had started dating Ryanne, and just _knew_ when they had broken up, and just _knew_ whenever Claude felt nostalgic or cranky or worn too thin, And now, the one time he actually wishes that Danny _would_ just know, Danny... doesn't. 

Claude grabs a bag of spring mix, figuring that the kids could probably do with a salad or two, and then he rounds the corner to the deli. He stands in front of the cheese case for a few minutes, reading the labels on some of the blocks, before Danny comes walking over, tying a knot in the top of a plastic bag holding six apples. 

"We still have half a brick of cheddar at home," he says, like half a brick is at all enough for five sandwiches. 

"Yeah, I know," Claude says, not looking up, still canning the display. "Cam asked for caramelized onions in his grilled cheese, though, so I think I want gruyere, or cantal, maybe." 

Claude doesn't have to be looking at Danny to know that he's rolling his eyes when he says, "Well, Cam's ten; he'll eat whatever you put in front of him." 

"It's all about the integrity of the sandwich, Danny," Claude says lightly, and then he finally just gives in and snags a wedge of each. 

Claude grabs the cart and the two of them keep walking, turning down each aisle just in case they see something they need. 

"What about peanut butter?" Claude asks as they're passing the condiments, but Danny shakes his head. 

"We still have a new jar in the pantry." 

"Skippy?" Claude asks, tossing Danny a strawberry jam to place in the front of the cart, away from the produce. "Or JIF?" 

"Skippy," Danny says. "I haven't bought JIF since that whole Carson fiasco." 

"Probably for the best," Claude says, because although Carson's usually pretty easy-going, when he makes up his mind on something—like the superiority of Skippy peanut butter—he can throw a tantrum with the best of them. 

"Yeah," Danny agrees. "Don't let me leave without Funyuns." 

"Wow," Claude says, taking his elbows off the handlebar of the cart for long enough to grab a bottle of ketchup. "You're disgusting; congratulations." 

Danny shrugs like he's nonplussed, even though Claude can see the smile on his face, and he says, "Caelan agrees with me." 

"Cam agrees with _me,_ " Claude points out. "And as the previously declared smartest of your kids—"

"Oh! _Oh!_ Throwing my own words back at me." Danny shakes his head sadly. "Lower than low." 

"Truer than true," Claude points out. 

Danny doesn't respond, and Claude's two seconds away from taking that as a victory and being smug about it, but then Danny shoulders him lightly into a display of cookies at the end of the aisle, and instead Claude has to struggle to steady himself and keep the cart from knocking everything over. 

Danny just keeps walking, nonchalantly looking at the shelves as Claude picks up the few boxes that he did knock over and then rushes after him. People are glancing over, probably because of all the noise they're making, but Claude ignores it. 

"Yeah, happy eighth birthday, asshole," Claude says under his breath, because whether or not Claude would've done the same thing is beside the point. 

There's a second where Danny just looks at him, wide-eyed, but then he tips his head back and laughs loudly. 

"Who even let you out of the house?" he asks, like _he_ wasn't the one who started all of this. Claude almost wants to say, _Now I see where Cameron gets it from,_ but he's seen that since the beginning, and so instead Claude just ignores him and grabs a box of rice. 

 

Claude makes it through all of grocery shopping without telling Danny that he’s been planning on moving out, and so by the time they make it home, the guilt’s kind of eating at him. It would be a lot easier if this was just a job to him, if Danny was just his employer, and the boys just kids he was paid to look after. They’re not, though; they’re so much more than that, and that’s what makes this so hard. 

“This feels almost empty,” Danny says, taking a jar of Nutella out of the pantry as they’re in the middle of putting everything away. Claude looks over the open door of the fridge at him, as Danny opens the jar and says, “This _is_ empty.” 

He tosses the jar towards the trashcan; it hits the rim and crashes to the floor, skittering across the tile. 

“Hey, Danny?” Claude says, and it’s like his mouth is moving without his permission, or like he’s watching all of this happen from somebody else’s perspective; he knows what’s coming, even if he doesn’t know the exact words. 

“Yeah?” Danny asks, distracted as he unearths two more jars of Nutella from the back of the pantry. “How much Nutella do we even have?” 

“I’m moving out,” Claude says, and the second he does, he wants to take it back. He needed to tell Danny, because not saying anything isn’t fair to Danny _or_ Brayden, but that— _that_ wasn’t how he meant to do it. 

Danny pauses, halfway hunched over and holding a box of pasta, and he looks at Claude like he doesn’t get it. “What?” 

“Uh,” Claude says, and he scratches the back of his neck, look at the wall just over Danny’s head. “Yeah. I’m gonna—I mean, Brayden and I kinda wanted to… get a place, so I thought...” He shrugs awkwardly, and feels like shit. 

“I don’t—Did something happen?” Danny asks. 

“No!” Claude rushes out, because _nothing_ happened. “No, nothing like that, I just figured… I dunno. That it was time. I mean, the boys are growing up, and it’s not fair to make any of them share a room when they don’t have to, and Brayden had mentioned looking for a roommate.” 

“Oh,” Danny says, half surprised and half forcing happiness for Claude. “Sorry, this just came out of nowhere.” 

“I know,” Claude says. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I mean, I’ll still be able to do everything—the lunches and the driving and all that—I just won’t be down the hall at night.” 

“ _Oh,_ ” Danny says again, and this time, Claude can see him completely deflate. He looks so _relieved._ “I thought you were quitting.” 

“Fuck no,” Claude says. “Unless—is it a prob—”

“No, no,” Danny interrupts. “I just thought that’s what you meant. Wow, okay, so I can breathe again.” He smiles just a tiny bit, and laughs under his breath. “I was just thinking, the boys are all old enough now that they’d eat anyone else alive.” 

“Yeah,” Claude agrees, and then there’s this pause where he and Danny just look at each other, and the silence isn’t awkward, but it _is_ loaded, and Claude doesn’t like that. “Hey, Danny—it’s really not because of anything you guys did.” 

Danny shrugs like, _Alright,_ and then says, “But you’re not leaving over a bedroom for the boys, either.” 

Claude shakes his head, because no, he’s not; that’s a part of it, sure, but it’s not the driving force, and of course Danny figured that much out. 

“I love you guys,” Claude says, “but I’m _twenty-four._ ” 

It comes out sounding so selfish and not at all like what Claude meant by it. Claude meant, _The boys are getting older,_ and Claude meant, _You should find someone to actually be with,_ and Claude meant, _I have to learn how to be on my own,_ but instead it comes out like Danny and the boys are too much for him, or like they’re holding him back, when that’s not the case at all. 

“I know,” Danny says, and Claude wants to ask him _what_ he knows, only he doesn’t. “Nothing we can do to change your mind?” 

“No,” Claude says, and Danny smiles small again. 

“I didn’t think so. It’ll be weird without you living here.” 

“It’ll be weird for me, too,” Claude admits. 

“Well,” Danny says, and he takes in a deep breath, looks around at the kitchen like everything’s changed. “Let me know when you want to tell the boys.” 

“Okay,” Claude says. “Thanks. Seriously, thank you.” 

Danny’s smile doesn’t _grow,_ not exactly, but it does change into something a little less sad, and he says, “Anytime, Claude,” like he’s never meant anything else more. 

And that—it lifts such a huge weight off Claude’s shoulders, and he smiles back. Considering that the boys are the way they are, he knows that telling them will be a nightmare, one probably filled with yelling and slammed bedroom doors, but Claude tries not to think about it. 

Instead, he takes it one step at a time, and just smiles back. 

 

That night, when the boys are back home and complaining about how Sylvie made them play with the kids next door, everything feels back to normal between Claude and Danny. It’s not at all like how it was before in the kitchen, not tense or forced or anything. 

“Did you get any reading done?” Danny asks the boys. They’re all lounging around on the couches in front of the tv, Caelan on the loveseat and Carson lying starfish on the floor, Cam on the couch between Claude and Danny, sitting upside down so that his head hangs over the edge of the cushion. 

“No,” Caelan answers honestly. 

“I read the comics this morning, if that counts,” Cam offers, and Claude pulls a face. 

“Not a chance,” he says, and when Cam scoffs, Danny laughs. 

“Go get your books, and we’ll all read down here,” Danny says. “Don’t look at me like that; even Claude’s going to read with us.” 

And that’s news to Claude, especially as he’s not really all that huge on reading himself, and so he looks back over the couch and shouts to Carson, who’s halfway up the stairs, “Hey, grab the _Sports Illustrated_ that’s on my end table?” 

“Oh, so we have to read books,” Caelan says, “but Claude just gets to look at pictures of basketball players and girls in bikinis?” 

“Hey,” Claude defends himself. “There are articles in there, too.” 

“S’okay, Claude,” Cam says, nudging Claude’s thigh with his elbow. “I’ll read my book to you, if you want.” 

Claude doesn’t want, not really, because Cam’s reading something about airships and pirates, but it’ll be good practice for him, and Claude’s sat through worse just listening to some guys talking at the pond. He says, “Sure.” 

“I’ll have to fill you in on what’s going on first, though,” Cam says. “This book’s for like, middle schoolers, I think, so it’s probably hard to just jump right in.” 

“I’ll give you thirty seconds,” Claude tells him. “Anything past that is you trying to get out of reading.” 

“ _Claude._ ”

“No, Claude’s got a point,” Danny says, as the other two come stomping down the stairs. “You haven’t even moved to get your book yet.” 

“I’m gonna!” Cam defends himself. 

“I’m gonna,” Danny mimics, and then he reaches forward, tickling the side of Cam’s neck; Cam erupts into laughter and jerks away, flipping backwards off the couch in order to get away, kicking Claude in the head in the process. 

“Whoa,” Claude and Cam say at the same time, both of them holding their head, although for different reasons. 

“Sorry, G,” Cam offers with a shrug. 

“Don’t sweat it,” Claude says, and then he changes his mind, and groans theatrically. “Oh, no, I feel a concussion coming on. Quick! The only known cure is listening to a fantasy novel being read by a ten-year-old!” 

“If you’re just gonna make stuff up,” Caelan says, flopping back onto the loveseat with _The Giver_ in hand, “at least make it something _good._ ” 

“Oh, yeah?” Cam asks, coming to Claude’s aid. “Like what?” 

“Like stuffing grapes up your nose,” Caelan says. 

“Or,” Carson suggests, “having to drink an entire bottle of Gatorade in one breath.” 

Claude interrupts before they get carried away, and says, “Yeah, except I don’t want to do either of those things, so.” 

Danny lets out a laugh under his breath and then says, “Call me old-fashioned, but back when I was your age, reading was done silently.” 

“Unless you’re reading out loud,” Cam adds. 

“You don’t even have your book,” Danny points out again. 

“Oh!” Cam says, like he genuinely forgot. “Be right back!” He darts away, and Claude looks over to Danny. Danny’s already looking right back over at him, and that’s nothing new, so Claude smiles; it takes Danny a second to smile back, though, which—Claude just tries not to think about it. He doesn’t have time to, anyway, because then Cam’s back, and he says, “Okay, in this one—this is the second one—Matt and Kate are looking for this airship called the _Hyperion,_ and like, there’s lots of gold and stuff inside it, but the ship went missing ages ago and no one—”

“What about Bruce?” Claude asks, trying to remember what happened in the first book. 

“Dead,” Cam tells him. “Shot in the head… by _pirates._ ”

“Alright, already,” Danny interrupts, cracking open his own book. “Get on with the reading.” 

Cam makes a face like, _Ex-cuse me,_ but then opens the book to his bookmark, and reads haltingly, “'So, are you a hero or a mutineer, Mr. Cruse? An interesting question, don’t you think?’” And then after a beat, Cam adds, “That’s Mr. Pruss, who said that, by the way. He works at the airplane academy.” 

Honestly, Claude just spends the next forty-five minutes trying not to fall asleep. But still—it’s good. 

 

Claude wakes up before the boys and shuffles downstairs in just a pair of sweats. The house is warm, but the second he opens the back door to let the dogs out, the cold air hits him in the chest and has him immediately sliding the glass closed behind them. He can hear Danny moving around upstairs, and so while the dogs are running around like crazy in the backyard, he heads into the kitchen to set up the coffeemaker. 

Danny comes down just as the dogs are starting to scratch at the backdoor, and so he lets them in as he walks past, saying, “Ahh, _cold,_ ” under his breath as he does. The dogs know the routine, and so they sprint right for Claude’s feet, running around him and bumping into him as he fills up their food bowls. 

“I got you, I got you,” Claude says to them, placing the bowls down on the floor and giving Zoey a pat on the side, and then he looks up at Danny, says, “You give the boys a kick?” 

“No, it was still kind of early, I thought,” Danny says. “I figured we could give them a few extra minutes.” 

“Alright,” Claude says. “I’ll wake ‘em up in a few.” 

He busies himself in the kitchen, taking out bowls and cereal, and Danny moves around him, passing him milk and blueberries from the fridge, the two of them perfectly in sync from years of practice. Danny freezes halfway through, though, and just sort of stares at Claude, or maybe _through_ Claude, and that’s new. 

“What?” Claude asks. 

“Nothing,” Danny says, shaking his head and heading to the table. “It’s just—I’m not saying this to make you stay, but it’ll be weird without you.” He stirs a pack of Splenda into his mug and then dumps the newspaper out of its bag and onto the table, and Claude’s chest tightens just a little. 

“Danny, I’m still gonna _be_ here,” he says. “I’m just not gonna… sleep here.” 

“I know, I know,” Danny says, waving his hand like none of this is at all important, when it all _is;_ if anything is at all important, it’s this. 

“You guys are my family,” Claude says simply, because that’s the point of it all, of everything. 

“I know,” Danny says again, smiling this time, and then he laughs a little. “Fuck, I’m going to be a mess when everyone else moves out.” 

“Yeah, you’re screwed then,” Claude agrees, “but you’ve got a while until college comes knocking.” 

Glancing at the clock, Claude figures that it’s probably a good time to wake the boys for school, and although Danny moves like he’s going to do it, Claude beats him to the punch, because he’s not doing too much of anything all day, and Danny’s got to get ready for work. 

First stop down the hall is Caelan and Carson’s room; Danny’s plan was always to room the younger two together, but the boys vetoed that idea, and so Cam has the smaller room to himself. 

Knocking twice on the door before opening it, Claude says, “Up and at ‘em. Time to get ready for school.” 

“Nnnnghhh,” Caelan says. “G’way.” 

Carson, however, is much quicker to wake up, and he blinks lazily for a second before looking at Claude and saying, “It’s a teacher in-service day today.” 

“Okay,” Claude says slowly after a beat. “So you don’t have school?” 

“No,” Carson says, and Caelan groans loudly and sandwiches his head between two pillows in a clear sign of _Be quiet or get out._

“Right,” Claude says. “So why aren’t you still at your mom’s?” 

“S’boring there,” Carson says. “We just didn’t tell her about it.” 

“Right,” Claude says again. “Go back to sleep,” and then he shuts the door, heads to his room to check the school calendar on his phone real quick. 

Carson’s not lying—not that Claude really thought he was—and the realization just sort of makes him… It makes it feel hard for him to swallow, bizarrely, just knowing that they picked him and Danny over Sylvie. It’s not a contest, never was and never will be, but it’s still nice that the boys wanted to come home. It’s still _really_ nice, because he’d pick them over everyone else, too, and moving in with Brayden doesn’t change any of that. 

He heads back downstairs, tells Danny about the in-service, and even though Claude doesn’t say anything about Sylvie, Danny still smiles like he knows, like he thinks the same. 

“That doesn’t screw up any plans for you or anything, does it?” Danny asks. 

“Nah,” Claude says, already unlocking his phone and opening a new text. 

_Got the boys for the day. New plan—all 4 of us shame you at mini-golf, not just me,_ he sends to Brayden. 

It’s a quarter past seven, but for whatever reason, Brayden’s up, because a few minutes later, he sends back, _Wake up, G. You’re dreaming._

Claude just smiles, and tries to hold back his laugh. 

 

By the time Claude and the boys finally pile out of the car and into the parking lot, Claude sort of expects them to be super late, and for Brayden and Coots to be standing outside by the door, ready to chirp the four of them for it; instead, Brayden’s car is nowhere to be seen, and Claude sort of debates just waiting for them inside because it’s so cold. 

“And then they throw Marion in the snake pit with him,” Cameron says, continuing his story from earlier in the drive as he unbuckles his seat belt and is the last one to climb out of the car. “And they take the Ark and like, close up the pit so he and Marion can’t get out, and there’s all these snakes everywhere—”

“Close your door and hurry up,” Caelan cuts him off. “I’m freezing.” 

“Maybe you should’ve worn a jacket,” Carson calmly suggests, and Caelan just shoves him, prompting Carson to shove back, and the two of them half-wrestle as they make their way towards the front door; Claude keeps and eye on them, but lets them go. 

“I don’t get why he doesn’t wear a jacket,” Cam tells Claude once the two of them are far enough away, and when he goes to slam his car door, there’s a loud metal clank signaling that the seat belt got caught. Claude reaches around him and opens the car door again, making sure to move the seat belt out of the way before closing it again. 

“Me either,” Claude says. “Maybe he’s just a little crazy.” 

Cam laughs at that, both like it’s a secret and like Claude’s hilarious, and he says, “Yeah, _maybe._ ”

“Watch it,” Claude jokes. “That’s your brother you’re talking about.” Then he crams a knit hat down over Cam’s eyes when Cam starts bemoaning the betrayal, and the two of them cut across the parking lot, matching their strides to the footsteps left behind by Caelan and Carson in the snow. 

Once they get inside, Cam immediately starts taking off his winter coat and hands it to Claude, even though the coat check and lockers aren’t exactly far away. Claude takes it anyways, and when he sees that Caelan and Carson are talking to strangers, he’s about to go chew them out for it until he realizes that they’re actually talking to Brayden and Coots. Caelan’s not the one talking for once, instead sort of just looking up at Coots like he’s some alien life form or something. 

“Hey,” Claude says to them once he gets close enough, and Cam practically glues himself to Claude’s side. “Didn’t see your car in the lot.” 

“We took Sean’s,” Brayden says, and then he smiles down at Cam, says, “Yo, how’s it going?” 

“Okay,” Cam says with a slight shrug, and Brayden looks like he’s trying to hold back a smile. Claude doesn’t know why Cam gets like this—all shy and quiet and everything—even around people that he knows, but he opens up fast enough, and so Claude doesn’t really spend much time thinking about it. 

“This is my friend, Coots,” Brayden says to Cam. “He’s really shy, but once you get him talking—actually, it’s probably not even worth it, never mind.” 

“ _Hey,_ ” Coots says, and he elbows Brayden a little; Cam rubs his eyes, which means he’s trying not to laugh because he still wants to be shy. And then Coots smiles small at Cam and says, “I like your shirt.” 

And it’s weird, how maybe that’s all it takes for Coots, because then Cam’s smiling small right back at him and saying, “Thanks. G’s wearing the same one. We got it so we could look cool at the driving range, once—”

“Can we just go play already?” Caelan interrupts, his arms crossed. 

“Oh my _god,_ ” Carson says, rolling his eyes like he knows something they don’t, and Claude recognizes the start of a fight when he sees one, and so he does his best to just stop it before it even starts. 

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “I’m just gonna go shove our jackets in a locker; how about you go pick out what color balls you want?” 

He looks towards Brayden for a second, just to make sure that’s alright, but Brayden’s got Carson in a headlock, the both of them paying zero attention to Claude. 

“I got it, it’s cool,” Coots says, scrunching up one side of his mouth in the face that he always makes and that means whatever he wants it to at the time. 

“Yeah, G,” Caelan says. “We got it, it’s cool.” 

And that—

Not that Caelan’s _never_ helpful, but he’s not _usually_ helpful, and so Claude’s thrown off for a second. He looks between Caelan and Coots, and both of them look so earnest that Claude just lets it go and says, “Alright, two seconds,” before collecting their coats and jogging away, because he knows Brayden, and he knows his kids, and there’s nothing good that can come from leaving them alone for an extended period of time. 

It takes a few minutes, but by the time Claude gets back to the group, it’s like he hadn’t even left; they’re all still debating ball colors, and so Claude just reaches over Cameron’s head and passes cash to the guy at the booth, holding up four fingers. 

“There’s not enough colors, though,” Carson insists, clearly rehashing whatever point he’s making, and that much is true: there are only five, and six of them. 

“Whatever, two people can have the same,” Brayden says. “Color, I mean, not the same ball. No cheating, you three, I’m watching you.” He does that dumb hand gesture, pointing from his eyes to the boys, and Claude feels a bit of satisfaction at how all three of them roll their eyes rather than laugh. 

“Wow,” Coots says. “Tough crowd.” 

“You don’t know the half of it,” Claude tells him. “Dibs on the orange ball.” 

“But you _always_ take the orange one,” Cam says. 

“Did you want the orange one?” Claude asks, ready to avert any crisis that may or may not manage to pop up, and that’s the thing about having kids, he realizes: there’s always a fight or a crisis or a meltdown right around the corner, no matter where they are, or how much fun they’re having. Once he figured that out, his job became a lot easier. 

There’s a pause where Cam’s clearly thinking about it, and then he says, “No, I want the red one.” 

“Pass me one of the blue balls,” Brayden says. “I feel like I can relate to them.” 

Coots laughs and says, “Shut the—shut up, no you can’t.” 

“What do you mean?” Carson asks. 

“ _Nothing,_ ” Claude says, looking pointedly at Brayden, and then he reaches out, tugs on Carson’s ear. 

Coots grabs a green ball as Carson’s squawking and swatting at Claude’s hand, and then Caelan grabs a green one, too. 

“I thought you wanted the yellow one?” Cam asks. 

“I never said that!” Caelan insists, and Coots freezes like he’s unsure whether or not he just started World War III by taking a green one. 

“But—” Cam starts, and then he cuts himself off, half out of self-preservation and half out of a lack of interest, and then he looks up at Claude, says, “Can we go now?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Claude says, looking around to make sure everyone has golf balls and clubs, and he pulls up the rear as they head to the first hole. 

 

The first few holes go alright, just a lot of the boys being loud and competitive, and Coots looking vaguely overwhelmed by them, but Brayden keeps his audience in mind with the jokes that he makes, and no one gets into any serious arguments, and so for the most part, Claude considers it a win. 

Setting his ball down on the at the start of the hole, he looks out at where everyone else has ended up, and there’s no way he’s not going to knock his ball into someone else’s—probably Carson’s, judging by where his ended up after he whacked it up green and it ricocheted around for a while—but that’s how it goes, he supposes. He locks his fingers and leans over, bends his knees a little as he lines up to putt. 

“This isn’t the Masters, Tiger,” Brayden deadpans. “Any day now would be great.” 

“I’m not going to respond to that,” Claude says, not even glancing up, “and it’ll be that much sweeter when my golf game does the talking for me and I destroy you.” 

“Do you even _have_ any golf game?” Brayden asks. 

“You hit a six on a par three,” Caelan reminds Brayden. “I don’t think you have room to talk.” 

“Yeah, Brayden,” Cam chimes in, and Claude _does_ glance up then, to shoot a wide, cheesy smile at Brayden. 

“Mo’ teeth, mo’ problems, eh?” Brayden says, referring to Claude’s gap, and then he turns, nudges Coots and waggles his eyebrows. Claude ignores them both and putts; it’s a pretty solid effort, and places him just a few inches away from the hole. 

“We think it looks pretty stupid,” Carson informs them, heading over to take his second shot. “He leaves his fake around the house all the time, sitting in random glasses. It’s gross.” 

“I’m missing some, too, so I know how it goes,” Coots says, and then three sets of eyes swing over to him, putting him in the spotlight. 

“Really?” Caelan asks. “Which ones?” 

“It doesn’t count if it’s one of the back ones,” Cam rushes out. 

“It’s not,” Coots says, and as he takes out his front teeth, Claude genuinely wonders whether or not he knows what he’s doing as he’s doing it, or if he’s just naturally awesome with kids without meaning to be. 

“ _Ugh,_ ” Carson says gleefully, swinging his putter up over his shoulder, and almost taking Claude’s head out in the process. 

Cam sort of leans in closer and then, after a second of staring at Coots’s giant gap, says, “At least yours isn’t that bad, G.” 

“Coots’s isn’t _that_ bad, either,” Caelan defends, and Coots just laughs, shakes his head a little. 

“Yeah, it is,” Coots says, and then he pops his teeth back in before stepping up to putt. 

By the time they move on to the next hole, the boys are over the fact that Coots is missing teeth, and instead are hassling him about whether or not computer programming means he gets to create videogames. 

“That’s a dumb job,” Cam says, dropping his ball and hitting it without really looking. “I don’t want to make them, I just want to play them.” 

“Well, _I_ think it’s a cool job,” Caelan tells Coots, and Coots just shrugs like always. 

“Um. I think it’s pretty cool, too,” he says, “but like, different strokes for different folks.” 

“What does that even _mean_?” Carson asks. 

“I like outer space,” Cam says. “I want to be an astronaut.” 

“Very cool. Have you met Bryz?” He turns back to Claude, asks, “Have they met Bryz?” 

“Not yet,” Claude says. 

“Oh,” Coots says. “Well, we play hockey with this guy who’s an astronomer; you’d probably like him.” 

“Yeah, _probably,_ ” Carson says. “If Dad and G would ever ask Crosby if we could come watch sometime.” 

Coots turns back to Claude and pulls a _shit, sorry_ face, and Claude waves him off because it’s not like he hasn’t heard it from them before. 

And then, just before that can of worms can really be opened, Caelan snags the hat from off of Coots’s head and puts it on his own, before exclaiming, “You’ve got a big head!” 

Brayden nudges Claude, and then jerks his chin at Coots and the boys. He says, “So what do you think? Am I gonna be single by the time the day’s up?” 

Claude laughs a little, because he sees it, too, but ultimately shakes his head and says, “Nah, I think it’s just that Coots is new and cool. I dunno. But maybe not. Maybe watch out a little, ‘cause my boys are in it to win it.” 

“The Brioux family home wreckers,” Brayden jokes, and then, after a glance around at everyone else, he asks, “You tell him you’re moving out yet?” 

“Yeah,” Claude says, and then quietly adds, “He’s sort of—I dunno—I think he thinks it’s spur of the moment? Like maybe I don’t really mean it. He told me to let him know when I wanted to tell the boys.” 

“Alright,” Brayden says, thinking. “Alright, so—like ripping off a Band-Aid. The worst is past, or whatever.” 

“Yeah,” Claude says again, just to fill the space, and then when a fight finally breaks out over whether or not Carson toed Cameron’s ball over to the side, Claude jumps in to break it up, leaving Brayden to tug Coots out of the way with two fingers tucked in his back pocket. 

 

Carson's in a bad mood the entire drive home, and when they finally get back to the house, he throws himself down onto the living room couch and glowers at the blank tv screen. Claude doesn't really know what his deal is, because they _all_ lost to Coots, but he goes with it anyway and just tries to do damage control before Carson puts the rest of them in a bad mood, too. 

"You guys want some juice?" Claude calls out from the kitchen, snagging a Gatorade bottle with the tiniest bit of Fruit Punch left at the bottom out of the fridge and knocking it back. 

" _G,_ " Caelan says, walking in and sitting at the bar. "That was _mine_."

"It's been on the door for like a week and a half," Claude points out. "House rules." 

"That's dumb," Caelan says bluntly. 

"It is," Claude agrees, especially because there are no house rules for that sort of thing, and then he smiles wide, shows Caelan all his teeth, and tosses the empty bottle with the rest of their recycling. 

Cameron comes running in just then, his shoes off and his socks slipping a little on the tile; he steadies himself with one hand on the counter, and asks, "Can I have a Bloody Shirley?" 

And that, Claude will admit, is a pretty misleading name for cranberry juice and Sprite, especially considering that it just sounds like a Bloody Mary knock-off, but years ago when he first offered the boys his sad excuse for a homemade Shirley Temple, they were laughing so hard that he thought they were going to forget to breathe. _Is that a person?_ they asked, and, _I don’t even like church,_ and, _We only drink beer, Claude._ So when Cam suggested that it almost looked the color of blood, Claude just ran with it. 

"Sure," he says, and he tries not to laugh when Cam pumps his fist. "You wanna help?" 

"Um," Cam says slowly, as he climbs up onto a barstool next to Caelan, "I just want to _watch_."

"Yeah, no," Caelan says. Claude just shrugs because it's not like it's at all difficult to make on his own. 

Claude reaches up into the cabinets for three glasses and then fills them a little more than halfway with cranberry juice, cheating a little to give them more juice than soda. He tops it all off with some Sprite, and then hollers out to Carson. 

"Yo, Carson—come grab your glass!" 

"I don't want any," Carson yells back. "I never asked you to make me any!" And then a few seconds later, they hear him stomping up the stairs, followed by the sound of his bedroom door slamming. 

Cam pulls a face like, _Oops,_ and says, "Someone should've told Coots to just let him win." 

"Yeah, but it's not _Coots's_ fault," Caelan defends. 

Claude just takes Carson's glass for himself and says, "He'll get over it." 

"Like you're not a sore loser at Wii Bowling," Caelan says, and Claude reaches over, flicks him lightly between the eyes and makes him squawk. 

"Do you want me to go tell him to get over it?" Cam asks, like he honestly doesn't realize this'll just make everything worse. 

"Not a chance," Claude says. 

"I'll talk to him," Caelan offers, and then he adds, as if planning out what he's going to say, "Second born, second best..." 

"Crazy idea," Claude proposes. "How about we just let him cool off on his own?" 

"Yeah, but that's not fun," Caelan points out, and Claude rolls his eyes. 

"Is Dad gonna be home soon?" Cam interrupts, changing the subject. 

Claude glances at the clock on the microwave and says, "In about an hour." 

"Can we play hockey in the driveway until he gets here?" 

Claude thinks about it for a second, and then asks them, "All your homework done?" 

" _Yeah,_ G," Caelan says. "We did it at Mom's; it's so boring there." 

Claude nods, mostly just to himself; Carson said the same thing earlier that morning, but he still tries not to let it show how much he likes hearing that, because regardless of how things ended between Sylvie and Danny, she's still their mother, and Claude doesn't want to encourage them to dislike her. 

"Hey, Carson!" he shouts to the ceiling instead of saying anything else. "We're playing street hockey if you want!" 

" _No!_ " Carson yells back, and Caelan scoffs. 

"Baby," he mutters, and he slips off his barstool and heads to get his shoes, chanting, "Hockey! Hockey!" 

"But I'm not done with my drink!" Cameron protests, and then after a few seconds where extreme indecision is written all over his face, he just takes his glass with him as he heads out of the kitchen and to the front door, leaving Claude no choice but to follow. 

 

The next day, everything goes according to schedule, and Claude manages to avoid any major catastrophes by offering the boys mini pizza bagels as an after-school snack. Danny’s due home at five-thirty, and then they’re heading right out for hockey, so Claude makes sure that the boys have their homework done, and that they’re all packed up and ready for school the next day. It’s a bit much, he knows, but it’s their first night of leaving the boys home alone while they go to the pond; normally, they call the high schooler from next door to come over, but not tonight, and Claude’s sort of needlessly anxious about it. 

“Claude, I’m _thirteen,_ ” Caelan reminds him. “I’m not gonna burn the house down.” 

“He might burn the house down,” Carson says. 

“Neither of you guys are really helping things,” Claude tells them, and Cam laughs into the crook of his elbow. 

“G, you’re being worse than _Dad,_ ” he says, and that’s when Claude realizes he needs to stop. 

Luckily, the guys at the pond are in a good mood, loud and happy, and they distract Claude the second he and Danny pull in. There’s another car right in front of them as they park—a massive, rundown van with a bumper sticker that says _Got Wood?_ peeling off of the back window—and when Claude and Danny get out of their car, Hartsy piles out of the van’s passenger side. 

“Hey, Hartsy,” Danny says, and Claude just gives him a wave as he goes to grab his bag from the trunk. 

“Danny B!” Hartsy says, his version of a hello, and then he calls out, “And hello to you, too, Giroux!” 

Claude grabs his skate bag and throws it over one shoulder, and then after he thinks about it, he tosses Danny’s over his other shoulder, just to carry it around to the front of the car. Hartsy’s got the back of the van open to get to his gear, and Claude can see that almost half of the van is filled with wood: a giant cross-section of a tree trunk, a couple warped boards, a two by four. 

“Hartsy!” Jake yells from somewhere inside the van. Claude can just barely make his shape out over the backseat. “You forgot, like, half a sub in here!” 

“Oh!” Hartsy says, surprised, almost as if he had forgotten, and he climbs into the van through the back, leaning over the wood and their bags to reach for his sub. Claude thinks it says something about his life that he could never just forget having half a sandwich left; if he wasn’t going to eat it, one of the boys would, and if they weren’t, Cam was giving it to the dogs. 

Danny must be thinking along the same lines, because when he reaches over to take his bag off of Claude’s shoulder, he rolls his eyes and smiles a little. 

Hartsy resurfaces, taking a bite of his sandwich. He says around a mouthful, “You really should go to Marabella’s and try their Jody Shelley sub.” 

“He means meatball,” Jake says, walking over. “He thinks he’s being funny.” 

“I _am_ being funny.” 

“You can call it that,” Danny offers, and Jake lets out laugh that has him tossing his head back. 

“Okay, _that_ wasn’t even that funny,” Hartsy points out, and the four of them start heading around the side of the house, back towards the pond. 

“Hey!” someone calls out, and even though Claude can easily place Max’s accent, he looks back to check, anyway. “Wait up, guys!” 

They don’t wait, not really, but they do slow down a little bit, and Claude thinks that’s maybe the same thing. He says to Hartsy, “I thought the meatball joke was funny.” 

“ _Thank_ you,” Hartsy says, loud and like Claude has just proven him right, and Jake knocks into his shoulder, almost causing Hartsy to lose the last few bites of his sub. 

“Why don’t you guys make out as well?” Jake asks jokingly, and just behind them, Max lets out an awkward laugh. 

“Ha ha,” he says. “That would be weird!” 

“Yeah, okay, sensitive guy,” Jake deadpans. “That was a joke.” 

“I know that!” Max objects, and then Jake turns around, gives Max’s cheek a barely there tap with the back of his hand, and runs off, laughing, his gear bag bouncing awkwardly as it hits his body with each step. “Motherf—”

He races off after Jake, leaving everyone else behind, confused. 

“Well,” Danny says after a long pause. “That was…”

“Yeah,” Claude agrees. 

Hartsy just finishes his sub. 

 

Hockey that night is exactly how it always is: fast-paced and exciting, physical and violent and demanding, and everything Claude wants out of a night at the pond. There’s a shootout at the end of the first game, and Claude scores his by going top cheddar, nothing fancy but it gets the job done. 

“Hey, Hank!” Biz calls out from the bench. “Henrik! On a scale from one to Sweden, how relieved are you that you don’t have to face my shot right now?” 

“Well,” Henrik calls back, pushing his mash back up onto the top of his head while he’s not being shot on, “it’s obviously a big relief. The toughest shot to stop is from players that have no clue where it’s going.” 

“ _Ohh!_ ” the Edmonton college guys yell, all of them standing shoulder to shoulder at the other end of the pond, Ebs with his fist up to his open mouth like he’s never heard a better chirp in his life. 

“Cold!” Biz says over everyone’s laughter, as Pyatt tosses an arm around his shoulders and gives him a shake. “Henke, that’s cold. That’s _cold,_ bro!” 

They all step off the ice a couple of hours later, and Claude looks over to Danny, who’s busy talking rapid-fire French with Bergeron about some new _poutine_ place that just opened downtown. Claude thinks about joining in, but then realizes that he doesn’t actually care enough to, and instead drags his bag over by Marchy. 

“What’s up,” he says, as statement more so than a question, and Marchy smiles. 

“Not much,” Marchy says. “Just trying to figure out—”

“Hey, Claude! _G!_ ” someone hollers, interrupting, and both Claude and Marchy turn to see who it was. Cabbie’s a good way’s away, cradling a small puppy in one arm and raising the other in a stationary wave. He says something to Segs and hands over the puppy, and then he walks over, still dressed in his ridiculous uniform from the zoo. 

“Yo, G,” Cabbie says, dropping himself into the open space next to Claude. “Long time no see, doggie. Brad, how’s it going?” 

“No complaints here,” Marchy says, and as Cabbie starts saying, _That’s good, that’s good,_ both he and G return to taking off their skates and shin pads. 

“Yeah,” Claude says, “I haven’t seen you since, uh. Since over the summer, I guess.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Cabbie agrees. “When you and Danny brought your boys over for some behind-the-scenes.” 

“Hey, thanks again for that,” Claude says, tugging his sweater off over his head. “Cam really loved it. You had him all hopped up about animals for the longest time.” 

“No problem,” Cabbie says with the wave of his hand. 

From the other end of the ice, someone screams out for _Nose Face Killah,_ and so Marchy shoves his bare feet into some flip-flops despite the weather and says, “Be right back,” before darting off. 

“Okay, so,” Cabbie says to Claude once Marchy’s gone. “I have a gift for you.” 

“It’s not Christmas yet,” Claude points out, mostly because there’s no reason to be exchanging gifts, and so whatever it is that Cabbie has for him, he probably doesn’t want. 

Cabbie just holds out a hand, palm facing out, and makes a face like, _Calm down and see what it is first._ Then he goes into the bag that he brought with him and hands over to Claude a red and white knit winter hat. 

“To replace the hat the camels ate,” Cabbie says, and even though that one was a baseball cap, Claude doesn’t mention it, and instead flips back his hair and pulls the hat on. “Looks good,” Cabbie tells him. 

“Yeah, but is it me or the hat?” Claude asks, and Cabbie just laughs. “Well, thanks, man. I appreciate it.” 

“Anytime.” 

Claude shoves his skates back into his bag and zips it up, and when he stands, so does Cabbie. 

“See you around,” Claude says. “You coming Friday?” 

“Depends on PK,” Cabbie says with a shrug, and then he and Claude go their separate ways. 

Claude heads over to where he last saw Danny, weaves between the people and the gear bags just to get to him, and finds Danny by himself, waiting and ready to go. A couple of people yell at them as they head out—Vinny, Simmer, Rosie—and they wave back, laughing off taunts of a Brioux family and hurling some of their own insults back. Claude thinks they’re almost home free when Danny breaks the news. 

“Gotta talk to Crosby first,” Danny says, and Claude lets his head drop back as he groans. 

“ _Why?_ ” he asks, not bothering to hide his disdain, and Danny just rolls his eyes, familiar with it all. 

"Half a minute; you don't even have to say anything to him."

“Good; I have nothing _to_ say to him,” Claude reminds him, which is childish, but to be fair, Crosby broke Claude’s fucking wrists and left him needing surgery. He thinks he has a legitimate reason to hold onto the grudge. 

So they take a slight detour on their way out, making sure to walk past Crosby, who’s busy changing into a pair of Crocs. Danny says, as simple and as pleasant as ever, “Hey, Sid,” and the fact that Danny’s calling him _Sid_ annoys Claude more than it should. 

“Danny,” Crosby says, and he’s smiling a little, not at them, but just leftover from something else. “That was a hell of a goal today.” 

“Thanks,” Danny says, like Claude hadn’t already told him that on the ice, and then again on the bench. “Hey, listen—could I bring my boys to our next meet-up? Not to skate with us or anything, they’re still too young, but just to watch a bit?” 

Crosby shrugs and says, “Sure. Of course,” like he runs this show, and that’s the last straw for Claude. 

It’s immature, and he knows it, but he doesn’t care enough to stop himself from saying, deadpan, “How gracious of you.” 

“ _Claude,_ ” Danny says, switching into French. “All I asked for was like thirty seconds. You couldn’t have lasted thirty fucking seconds?” And then back to Crosby, he says politely, “Thanks,” before pulling Claude away with a hand on his wrist. 

Claude doesn’t say anything as Danny physically drags him away, doesn’t pull his arm out of Danny’s grasp, just walks faster to keep up. Danny eventually lets go somewhere around the side of the house, and then he lets out a sigh like he did when Cam broke the ceiling fan with a soccer ball, or when Carson kept flirting with his fourth grade teacher. 

“No,” Claude says finally, when they’re sight of their car, even though he doesn’t think Danny was ever actually looking for an answer. “Thirty fucking seconds was thirty fucking seconds too long with that asshole.” 

“Claude,” Danny says again, but this time, both his name and the sigh that accompanies it comes out a lot less frustrated and a lot more fond. 

And then Danny laughs. 

 

When they get home, Claude’s exhausted but wide-awake, adrenaline still coursing through his body. That means he’s not going to be falling asleep for a long while, and with the clock already pushing midnight, it should be a problem, except for how it’s not; Claude doesn’t mind being tired tomorrow, not so long as he gets to have nights like these. 

Danny parks the car in the driveway just as a light snow starts to fall, the kind that’ll be more or less gone by the morning, but that makes it feel a lot more like winter. The two of them grab their stuff from the trunk and then head into the house through the garage, dropping their bags off as they go and brushing the snow out of their hair. Claude toes his shoes off just outside the door and then steps inside, following Danny’s lead and hanging his jacket up in the closet, rather than just tossing it on the closet floor. 

“Do you want some tea?” Danny asks, already heading to the kitchen. He started drinking tea a couple months ago, although where that habit came from, Claude has no clue. Mostly he thinks it’s just an excuse to eat something sweet with it. 

“Nah, I’m good,” Claude says, and heads to the living room to turn on the tv. There’s not much on, not this late, and so he settles for a Friends rerun, immediately lowering the volume so he doesn’t wake the boys; apparently, when Claude and Danny are out of the house, they need it on as loud as it’ll go. 

“That kid Kaner’s really good,” Danny calls out conversationally, and Claude tosses the remote down onto the couch before heading over towards the kitchen. Danny’s filling up the kettle at the sink, and doesn’t seem to notice that Claude’s leaning against the counter, because he keeps saying just as loudly, “Jon’s friend. What’s his deal, anyw—whoa, shit!” 

Danny turns around and jumps, startled at seeing Claude; he brings one hand up to cover his heart, and then lets out a deep breath. 

“Easy there, old man,” Claude jokes. “You’ll upset the pacemaker.” 

“Hilarious,” Danny deadpans, placing the kettle on the stove and turning on the burner. 

“Your kids think so, anyways.” 

“Is that what they tell you?” 

“Ouch,” Claude says. “Right for the jugular.” 

Danny laughs softly at that, dropping a tea bag into his empty mug, and then says, “Last chance on some tea.” 

“No, thanks,” Claude says. Danny hums in acknowledgement, and the two of them lapse into a comfortable silence, Danny getting out the sweetener, and Claude just watching him. “The boys’ll be amped to hear they’re allowed out to the pond on Friday.” 

“Yeah, for sure,” Danny says. “They’ve been on my case to ask for ages.” 

“I guess they figured I was a lost cause, ‘cause I haven’t heard too much about it,” Claude says. 

“Maybe,” Danny says, shrugging. “Maybe they’ve just realized that you turn into a petty child when you interact with Crosby.” 

“ _Me?_ No,” Claude denies. “Never.” 

“My mistake,” Danny says, and then he pushes off the counter from where he was leaning. “I’m just going to go check up on the boys, make sure everything’s in one piece. If the kettle goes off…?”

Claude waves his request away and says, “I’ll run upstairs, don’t sweat it.” 

“Thanks,” Danny says, handing over responsibility to Claude without so much as a pause. It took them a while to get there, but once they did—it was an all or nothing sort of thing, like going off the deep end, and now it’s like Danny trusts Claude with the boys just as much as he trusts them with himself. They’ve been living out of each other’s back pockets for years, been through a lot together and with the boys, and Claude would trust Danny with anything, everything. 

Claude runs up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The hallway is dark, and so he flips on a light once he makes it to the top of the stairs, his hand finding the switch easily through years of practice. 

He stops first at the door on the left and cracks the door open, just enough so that he can get his head through, and so that a slice of light cuts through the darkness. Cam’s asleep on his bed, on his stomach and on top of the covers, and there’s a glass of water dangerously close to tipping over the edge of his end table. Claude leaves the door open as he steps into the room, tiptoeing around books and a soccer ball and Cam’s backpack, just enough so that he can get within arms length of the glass and move it back some, so it won’t get accidentally knocked over onto the carpet. 

He leaves just as quietly, going out the way he came in, Cam still fast asleep by the time he closes the door. 

Claude makes it a few steps further down the hall and is just about to open the door to Caelan and Carson’s room when he hears it: 

“—dumb idea. That’s never gonna work.” 

“Well, it’s not like _Cam_ knows what he’s—”

They stop talking the second the door’s even a crack open, the two of them pretending to be asleep, and Claude just stands there for a second, leaning against the doorjamb and trying not to laugh. 

“Yeah, real convincing,” Claude says, and the boys give up the ghost the second they’re called out. 

Caelan flops over onto his side, squinting up at Claude and into the hallway light, and he says, “Don’t you know how to knock?” 

“Claude was raised by wolves,” Carson says. “It’s not his fault.” 

“I’ll let my mom know what you really think of her,” Claude says, because being around the boys means he’s automatically brought down to their level of _I’m telling._ “Now go to bed, seriously, it’s past midnight and you guys are going to hate yourselves tomorrow morning.” 

Caelan and Carson fall silent, and Claude thinks he’s made his point, so he turns to leave. The door’s almost closed by the time he hears Caelan’s, “It’s already tomorrow morning.” 

“ _Good night,_ guys,” Claude says, and then he heads back downstairs before he can find out if they start talking again. 

 

Claude thinks it’s a miracle that they actually get out of the house the next morning on time, but then when they’re only halfway pulled out of the driveway, Caelan realizes he forgot one of his books and has to race back inside to get it. It takes almost seven minutes before Caelan races back out again, climbing into the car all out of breath and huffing, “Just kidding; I guess I left it at school,” by which point Claude has to drive like a madman—albeit a safe one—just to get Caelan and Carson to school on time. 

“It’s fine, G,” Carson says when they get there, unbuckling his seatbelt while Claude idles, double-parked by the front door in a sparse line of last-minute cars. 

“Yeah. Besides, people are late all the time,” Caelan adds. 

“ _You_ better not be late all the time,” Claude warns them. 

There’s a moment of silence, and then, “Bye, Claude! Thanks for the ride!” and, “See ya, Cam!” and then the two of them are hopping out of the car and slamming the door behind them. Claude just lets out a long breath and shakes his head. 

“They think they’re being cool,” Cam explains, although _what_ it explains, Claude has no clue. 

Looking at Cam in the rearview, Claude says, “Let’s get you to school, okay?” 

“I guess,” Cam says, and Claude throws on his turn signal, pulls away from the curb. 

Once they’re out of the parking lot, Claude changes the radio to a country station, because although both Claude and Cam like country, Caelan refuses to listen to it, and apparently his vote is the only one that counts. 

Jason Aldean’s _Fly Over States_ is the next song to come on, and Claude taps his fingers on the steering wheel. He tells Cameron, “I love this song.” 

“Yeah,” Cam says, which doesn’t mean much in this situation. “Hey, G?” 

“Yeah, bud?” 

“Do you think Mom and Dad still love each other at all?” 

And that—it’s definitely a lot heavier than anything Claude was expecting for a Wednesday morning. The boys handled the divorce about as well as to be expected, but it’s been so long that they hardly ever mention it anymore. It’s weird because, for Claude, not having Sylvie around is the status quo; he only really entered the picture once Danny knew Sylvie was on her way out of it. But okay. Okay. He can deal with this; it’ll be awkward and uncomfortable, sure, but he can do it. 

“Yeah,” Claude answers, even though the divorce proceedings were so ugly, there’s no way there’s even any _like_ left between them. “Sure I do. They just don’t love each other the same way that they used to.” And then, because Cam needs to know this, he painfully adds, “They’re happier with things this way; this is good for them.” 

“I know,” Cam says. “I remember how they were.” 

That one hurts, somewhere deep in Claude’s chest, because he’s seen Sylvie and Danny arguing before, when the boys weren’t around, and while he’s sure they never would’ve fought like that around them, there’s no way things went smoothly, either. He says, “What made you ask that? About your mom?” 

“I dunno,” Cam says, an obvious lie, although Claude won’t press it. “I was just thinking about it.” 

“Oh. Well… Sometimes, after a while, people just realize it’s better for them not to be married to each other anymore. That’s all that happened between your mom and dad. And none of it has anything to do with how much they love you. You know that, right?” 

“Sure,” Cam says, shrugging, and then just when Claude’s starting to go crazy trying to figure out how to respond to _Sure,_ Cam changes the subject. “Remember that time your mom visited and she liked me better than you?” 

“No,” Claude says, a bit relieved and feeling the need to joke around, just to cover it up. “I don’t think that happened. You dreamed it all up.” 

“It did happen,” Cam says smugly, and the thing is, it really did. Claude’ll never admit that, though, and so instead he just reaches back and pinches Cam’s ankle. 

“You got everything you need for school?” he asks. “Lunch, books, science projects? Your passion for knowledge and learning?” 

“I have my lunch,” Cam offers, and Claude laughs; one of four is about what he expected. 

They pull into the parking lot of the elementary school, and Claude looks back at Cam in the rearview. Cam’s not like Caelan, doesn’t really show everything that he’s feeling on his face, but he’s been looking too serious ever since he brought up Sylvie, and Claude doesn’t really like that. 

“Hey,” he says. “Wanna help me make grilled cheese tonight? I’ll even let you pick what goes in ‘em, and whether we have it with soup or fries.” 

“I choose soup _and_ fries,” Cam says, and then he shoulders open the door and hops out of the car. 

He runs a few steps before he thinks to stop and turn around, but when he does, he’s smiling, and that’s pretty much all that matters to Claude. 

“See you later, G!” Cam calls out, waving. “Say hi to Reemer for me!” 

He takes off running again, getting swallowed up by a group of friends, and then there’s nothing left for Claude to do but smile to himself and drive home. 

 

That afternoon, Claude meets up with Reemer for lunch at some IHOP knock-off that sells breakfast all day. He gets there before Reemer does, and then just sits in the car and checks his email on his phone for a while, running the engine just to stay warm. It's cold and grey outside, and a shiver runs down Claude's spine just thinking about stepping outside. 

He must get distracted by the picture Marchy sent the listserv—the back of someone's head, slightly blurry and clearly taken as Marchy trailed the guy around the sporting goods store, followed by the note, _He's got a big dome, eh?_ —because the next thing he knows, Reemer's rapping on the driver's side window with one knuckle, saying loudly through the glass, "I'm out here freezing to death, but you take your time." 

Claude smiles, because Reemer's been gone for a while, but every winter break he comes back, and it only ever feels like it's been a few days. He turns off the engine and climbs out of the car, and then, because he can't help it, he jerks his chin towards the restaurant and chirps back, "Nice to see your tastes are as refined as ever." 

Reemer shoves him a little bit, shoulder to shoulder, and says, "Shut up, you love this place, too." 

Claude just shrugs and tries not to smile too widely. 

Once they're inside and seated, the two of them catch up, and Reemer fills him in on everything, on life as a graduate, on how he saw Simmer flirting with some cashier at the grocery store, and why he moved back in with his parents. 

"Honestly, it just made sense at the time," Reemer says. "The job market's zero, and I've got student loans up to my eyeballs; this way, I don't even have to pay rent." 

"I'd say you probably could've crashed with Richie, rent-free," Claude tells him, "but he turned his spare into, like, a bedroom for his dog." 

Reemer's eyebrows shoot up, and he says, "Carter finally moved in?" 

It's a joke—obviously it's a joke—but it catches Claude off-guard and startles a loud laugh out of him; it just shows how long Reemer's been gone for, especially since the Carts-Richie co-dependency thing hasn't really been touched in a while. 

"Man, you've missed a lot," Claude says. "They're still pretty bad, but we got this new guy last year, and he actually makes Nealer breakfast on a regular basis." 

Reemer whistles low under his breath and says, "A few years without me, and you've all gone to shit. Good thing I came back." 

"We actually don't even need you; Coots just transferred schools to be back here." 

"It's like you guys just take anyone, now." 

"We _do_ just take anyone," Claude reminds him. Reemer looks like he's got some joke to make about that, but then their waitress walks up and interrupts them. 

"You boys ready to order?" she asks, smiling, and something about her reminds Claude of Pronger's wife, even though their waitress is probably about fifteen years older than she is. It's the hair, maybe. 

"Yeah," Reemer says. "Can I just have the chicken finger basket?" 

"No," she says seriously, although she's not actually being serious about it. Reemer just laughs awkwardly and starts folding his paper placemat into an airplane. 

"Oh, bummer," he says, laughing uncomfortably. 

"I'm just kidding, sugar," the waitress says, smiling, and then she turns to Claude. "And what can I get you?" 

"Pancakes with a side of bacon," Claude says. "Please." 

"Coming right up," she tells them, and then she takes their menus and leaves. 

Once she's out of earshot, Reemer groans and says, "I hate when people say _no_ like that. What do you say to that? There is no good response to that." He doesn't bother waiting for Claude to respond. "Anyway. We going to that Gretzky thing next week? On Tuesday, or whatever?" 

Claude hasn't seen Gretzky in ages, not since he left their old pond to become Minister of State for Sport, and even then, they were never particularly close. But still, it could be nice. He thinks it over, and next week he's got lacrosse practices to drive to, and hockey three nights a week, and Caelan's school's band concert to attend, and he has to go apartment hunting with Brayden, and figure out what furniture they'll need, and he _still_ has to break the news to the boys, and—

"Wait. What Gretzky thing?" 

Reemer looks at him like he doesn't know how Claude functions on a daily basis, and says, " _You live here._ "

"Yeah," Claude agrees, "but I’m a little more focused on politics at the seventh grade student council level." 

Reemer rolls his eyes and doesn’t respond to that, instead saying, "Apparently Gretzky's giving some big talk down at the town hall, I don’t know. Didn't you get Crosby's email?" 

Claude shoots him a look that says everything Reemer needs to know, and Reemer laughs like it figures. 

"And to think—if you didn't lay him out six seconds into a scrimmage all those years ago, you guys might even be friends," Reemer says. 

" _Please,_ " Claude says, pointing his unused fork at Reemer. "You are not pinning this one on me." 

"Whatever," Reemer says, because honestly, none of this makes a difference to him; he's good people, but he's not Danny, who has convinced himself to hate Crosby almost as much as Claude does, even if he is a lot more polite about it. "I still think we should go, if you’re not busy. Crosby said he's got some big business meeting, anyway, so it's not like he's going to be there." 

"Alright," Claude says, shrugging. "Count me in; I’m not taking any classes this semester, so." 

"You ever actually plan on graduating?" Reemer asks, adding under his breath, "Not even one class this semester, you gotta be kidding me." 

Claude reminds him, "You took five years, and that was full-time." 

“Hey!” Reemer says. “That last year was a victory lap.” 

Claude just ignores him and, laughing, kicks him under the table; with Reemer, he’s learned to pick his battles. 

 

That night, they have grilled cheese like Claude promised. Cam doesn’t help, not exactly, but he does sit on a barstool by the counter and direct Claude with what ingredients to use. 

“What about that light cheese?” he asks, as Claude rifles through the fridge and holds up his options. “Is that the one that I hate?” 

“You mean goat cheese?” 

“Yeah, goat cheese,” Cam says. “That’s not it, is it?” 

From in the living room, Caelan calls out over the sounds of the Wii, “Do you honestly not know what you do and do not like?” 

“Can it, Caelan,” Danny says as Carson laughs, but they’re not in the kitchen with Claude and Cam, and so Claude ignores them, and ultimately so does Cam, even though he pulls a face and opens his mouth for a second like he’s about to shout something back. 

“No, it’s—hold on.” Claude checks the label. “This is gruyere. It’s like Swiss, you’ll like it.” 

“Oh, okay,” Cam says. “Then that’s fine. But let me try it first.” 

“Sure,” Claude says, shrugging, and after taking out the cutting board, he unwraps the block of cheese and cuts off a small piece for Cam. 

Cam exaggeratedly smells the cheese before shoving the entire piece in his mouth and saying around it, “S’good.” 

“Swallow first, please,” Danny tells him, sliding onto the open barstool next to Cam. He smiles between the two of them, and then asks, “How goes cooking?” 

“He’s learning from the master,” Claude says, slicing the rest of the cheese before laying out slices of bread. “You still want the onions in it, right, Cam?” 

“Um,” Cam says, and then he smiles over at Claude and asks almost shyly, “Can we have apples instead?” 

“Apples it is,” Claude says. 

Danny looks at Claude like he can’t believe Claude is indulging a ten-year-old, but then turns to Cam and says, “You better pay attention; I want you making these for me once Claude’s gone.” 

And that—

Claude completely freezes for a second, both because he hasn’t told the boys about moving out, not yet, and also because he’s never going to be _gone;_ it doesn’t work like that, not for Claude and not with the Brieres, and that’s what he needs to remember. That’s the whole point. 

Cam just laughs, though, like he doesn’t realize what he’s sitting right in the middle of, and he says, “I’m still too young to cook,” his go-to excuse whenever he doesn’t want to do anything. 

Danny looks at Claude and mouths, _Sorry,_ and then shakes Cam gently by the back of the neck. He says, “I forgot you never age.” 

Cam laughs and shrugs his shoulders up to his ears in an effort to get away, but before anyone can say anything else, Caelan comes walking in, with Carson looking moody and unhappy trailing behind. Claude doesn’t even have to ask who won. 

Cam apparently does, though, because he looks right at Carson and asks, “Did you lose again?” 

“ _No,_ ” Carson snaps. 

“You did,” Cam says, a grin spreading slowly across his face. 

“He actually didn’t,” Caelan points out, for once not in the middle of the bickering. “Hey, G, can I just have cheese in mine?” 

“Sure,” Claude says, because it doesn’t matter to him. “You want the basic cheddar?” 

“I don’t care,” Caelan says with a shrug. 

Claude turns to Carson and asks, “Carson, want apple in yours?” 

“I don’t _care,_ ” Carson says, repeating Caelan’s words, although he sounds angry about it for some reason, and so Claude doesn’t press things. 

“Alright,” Claude says instead. “Everyone get something to drink; sandwiches are going on the griddle.” 

And that—using a griddle instead of a frying pan—is something that Claude learned early on and realized to be a necessity. Making enough grilled cheeses for three boys and two grown men, especially considering that sometimes they want more than one each, just takes forever when he can only make two at a time, four at most if he’s working two burners. But the griddle? That fits eight, easy, and makes cooking so much quicker. 

“I’ll pour the milk,” Cam offers. 

“Hey,” Claude says, “I thought you were helping me with the sandwiches?” 

“Oh, right,” Cam says, sheepish, but he picks right up when Claude hands him the spatula, handle first. 

Cam flips the sandwiches when Claude tells him to, although the first few turn out to be a bit of a disaster until he gets the hang of it. Claude hangs back and lets Cam do his thing, and he looks around the kitchen, at Danny grabbing the fries out of the oven, at Caelan setting the table, and at Carson sulking in his seat. He looks back at Cam, too, at how his tongue pokes out of his mouth as he concentrates, and Claude remembers the way he sounded that morning when he said, _Sure,_ and he knows that the boys are missing out on having their mother around all the time—he _knows_ that—but he can’t help but feel so grateful for it, right down to his bones, because if Sylvie never left, Claude would never be right where he was, standing in the Briere kitchen, making grilled cheese sandwiches on a Wednesday night. 

Claude hates Sylvie on principle, and while he’ll never admit it in a million years, he kind of loves her, too, for moving out and leaving behind a family that needed him just as much as he needed them. 

 

The next morning, after dropping the boys off at school and then having to drive back to drop off the painstakingly prepared lunch that Cameron forgot on the counter, Claude decides to go on a run, and heads upstairs to throw on a million layers of clothes. He laces up and stretches, then puts his neck gaiter on at the door before rethinking it and taking it off. Instead, he just pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and then heads outside. 

It’s cold out, the kind of cold that he feels in his bones more than anything else, but it’s still a million times better than running on the treadmill, and it almost makes him feel like he’s out on the ice. There’s something to the biting cold that makes Claude think of learning how to skate on the neighborhood pond as a child, and of meeting Danny years ago one winter, outside after having gotten kicked out of an indoor rink. It’s nice, those kinds of memories. 

The streets aren’t exactly quiet out, but they’re quiet for the middle of the day, and Claude just enjoys this rare downtime with nothing that needs to get done right away. He runs—long, slow strides at first, just to stretch out before he picks up the pace—and it’s a familiar route for him, the same one he’s been running since he moved in with the Brieres, its hills and turns taken on by his body like muscle memory. 

Claude thinks about it, and he decides that he’s going to tell the boys about moving out during dinner, because that way, they’ll all be in once place, and he can actually get their attention. He kept thinking that it’d be best to just wait for the right time, but there’s never going to _be_ a right time; it was a hard decision for him to make, but moving out is the right decision, even though the boys won’t see it that way. He figures the only way to do it is to just power through it and get it over quickly, and to try not to take the boys’ overreaction to heart. 

When Claude finishes his run and heads back inside, his lips are chapped raw. He toes his shoes off at the door and kicks them into the hall closet before heading into the kitchen for some water. Zora’s lying on the tile under the table, fast asleep, and Zoey is nowhere to be seen, which sort of means they’ve missed the mark as watchdogs, but they’re great with the boys, and so Claude sneaks them table scraps when he can, anyways. 

Claude downs a glass and a half of water just standing there in the kitchen in socked feet. He debates making something for lunch for all of two seconds, and then just decides that not only does he not want to make anything, but he’s also not even hungry; Zoey seems to think he is, though, as she comes trotting in from wherever she was, and nudges her nose against the back of his calf. 

“You have your own water,” Claude says to her, but she just keeps looking up at him with big eyes, and he can’t say no. “Alright,” he says instead. “But just _one._ ” 

He goes to grab the dog treats from the pantry, and that’s when the phone rings. It’s the house phone, which is bizarre, because no one ever calls the landline, not the boys or Sylvie or Danny’s family or Claude’s parents. He almost lets it go to voicemail because of that, too, but then he rethinks it, and picks up. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi,” some woman says at the other end. “This is Justine; I’m calling from Principal McCammon’s office. May I speak to either Danny or Claude?” 

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Claude says. “This is Claude.” 

“Hi,” Justine says again. “I’m sorry to call this number, but no one was answering either of the two cell numbers I have listed.” 

“Sorry about that,” Claude says, and he is, because if one of the boys are sick, or if one of them got hurt, he needs to be available to take that call. “Is everything alright?” 

“Yes,” Justine says slowly, after a slight pause. “But Carson was actually involved in a fight this morning—he’s _alright,_ he’s _fine,_ and he’s not going to be suspended—but we are sending him home early today.” 

And that—

“ _Carson?_ ” Claude asks, completely thrown. “Carson _Briere?_ ”

“Yes,” Justine says. “Look, I understand that no one ever wants to hear that their child has been in a fight, but—”

Claude isn’t interested in anything she has to say to console him, or whatever it is that she’s trying to do, and so he interrupts her and says, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

“Great,” she says. “Thank you.” 

After Claude hangs up, he spends a minute just standing there in the kitchen, completely stunned. _Carson_ is the last of the boys that he would expect to get into a fight; Cam maybe when he’s older, and Caelan’s the obvious choice, but _Carson?_ Carson is so easygoing, and is hardly ever the instigator in any of their fights. Claude almost can’t believe it. 

Zoey nudges Claude’s leg again, and that shakes him out of his thoughts. He jumps, momentarily surprised, but then hands her a milk bone, and tosses Zora one as well. Then he bolts up the stairs and races through the quickest shower of his life, and he’s out the door less than ten minutes later, his hair still sopping wet and soaking his scarf and the back of his shirt collar. 

 

By the time Claude pulls into the school parking lot, he figures that Carson’s been left to sweat it out for long enough, and so he wastes no time double-parking his car in front of the _Buses Only_ sign and heading inside, straight for the front office. He knows the place pretty well, mostly just from picking the boys up when they’re sick and from the time Caelan hurt himself during gym, but this is the first time something like this has happened. They’re good kids; Claude’s honestly surprised that Carson was in a fight at all. 

Carson’s there when he opens the office door, sitting slumped in one of the chairs across from the secretary’s desk, and while he looks alright, fine save for the flush of red high on his cheeks, the neck of his shirt is all stretched out; it’s a dead give-away that _something_ happened, even though Carson will probably try to deny it. 

“Alright,” Claude says in French, grabbing Carson’s attention. “Let’s go.” 

Carson twists in his seat to see him, and the second he does, he starts, “Claude, I didn’t even _do_ —”

“We’ll talk in the car,” he says, and then he turns to the secretary—a woman he’s never actually seen before, and that he knows isn’t Justine—and asks in English, “Do I need to sign him out?” 

“Yep, right here,” she says, presenting him with a clipboard, and Claude picks up a pen that’s on the desktop. “Just sign next to his name and then you’re good to go, Mr. Briere.” 

Claude freezes for a moment, because while this has happened before, it’s never happened at school before; they have nothing but pages of paperwork with his name on it. He says awkwardly, “Um, it’s just Claude.” 

“Claude,” the woman repeats as an apology, and when Claude glances behind himself, Carson’s looking steadfastly at the wall, still glowering, his arms crossed. 

And the thing is, Claude can’t exactly fault Carson for fighting. He wants to, because Carson is smart as hell and knows better than that, but at the same time, maybe he _doesn’t_ know better; Claude was in two casts for weeks, and Danny came home with a black eye before that, and before _that,_ Claude had a tooth knocked out, either from the puck he took to the face or the fight that broke out right afterwards. If he and Danny are supposed to be leading by example, Claude thinks maybe they’re doing a pretty shitty job of it. 

Either way, Claude _knows_ Carson, has known him for years now and seen him grow up, and so he’s sort of finding it hard to be mad at him. Carson is a genuinely good kid, and so Claude reminds himself to be careful here, to not jump to conclusions that’ll only make things worse. He’s been with the Brieres for long enough that he understands his role, straddling the line between parent and friend, but he doesn’t really know what to say here. 

He settles for, “Let’s go; I’m parked out front.” He grabs Carson’s afterschool gym bag from off the floor and then heads out of the office, not bothering to check if Carson’s following because he knows he will be. 

Out in the sunlight, Claude tosses Carson’s bag into the back and then opens the driver’s side door, and he watches for a second as Carson glances back and forth between the car and the _Buses Only_ sign, choosing wisely not to comment on it, and instead opening the door to the passenger seat. 

“Don’t push it,” Claude says, climbing in and jerking his thumb towards the back. They’ve been sort of working up to letting Carson sit in the front now that he’s twelve, but there’s no chance Claude’s rewarding him with that on the same day he gets into a fight at school. 

“So stupid,” Carson mutters, just loud enough for Claude to hear, which, considering he’s on the other side of the door, is probably intentional. Claude ignores him. 

“Seatbelt, please,” Claude says, and the silence is so much louder in the car than it was outside it, even as Carson does as he asks, pulling at his seatbelt so quickly that it locks up. 

Claude starts the ignition once they’re both buckled in, and slowly pulls away from the curb. The drive home isn’t very far—it’s close enough that the boys could walk, if they wanted to or had to—and it goes by all that much quicker considering that it’s the middle of the day, school still in session and the buses off the road. 

He keeps waiting for Carson to start up with excuses or his side of the story, but Carson doesn’t say anything, and so halfway home, Claude asks, “We gonna talk about it, or just wait for your dad to get home?” 

And that’s apparently the right thing to say to get Carson talking, because he explodes with, “You don’t have to tell him!” 

“Of course I have to tell him,” Claude says. “You got into a _fight._ ” 

“You get into fights all the time,” Carson says, and—there it is. When Claude raises his eyebrows in question, anyway, Carson continues, “What about when you had to get your casts, or—I dunno— _last week_?” 

“Hey, watch it,” Claude says, warning him about his tone. “That’s hockey, anyway; that’s different.” 

“It’s not different at all,” Carson says. “You’re just saying it is.” 

“No,” Claude explains patiently, not really wanting to get into it. “It’s different because it’s part of the game, and he was saying some really—was someone saying bad stuff about you?” They’re at a red light, and so he turns in his seat to look back at Carson; Carson just slouches down further and looks out the window and away from Claude. 

“No.” 

“Did he say something about your brothers?” Claude asks. The three of them bicker constantly, but they’re still insanely protective of one another—a product of the divorce, Danny says—which would be nice to see if Carson weren’t getting sent home from school because of it. 

“ _No,_ ” Carson says, his voice coming out muffled because his cheek is propped up on his fist. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

Claude just rolls his eyes and tries not to smile at how melodramatic Carson’s being, and he says, “Alright, then we’ll wait for your dad.” 

“That’s not fair,” Carson tries halfheartedly, in what is clearly a last-ditch effort to avoid Danny’s wrath. 

“Life rarely is,” Claude tells him, and they drive in silence the rest of the way home. 

 

The second they get home, Carson goes to hide out upstairs and Claude spends the rest of the afternoon by himself; he picks Cameron up at three, and the late bus drops Caelan off at four-fifteen, but the second either of them walks through the door, they race upstairs to get up to who-knows-what with Carson. With the exception of a bedroom door slamming a couple of times, the three of them are pretty quiet, which is totally not normal and would have Claude on edge if he didn’t already have a good idea of what they were talking about. 

Cam comes downstairs after a while, and the only reason Claude doesn’t ask if he wants to play Mario Party is because he walks right past the living room and into the kitchen. Claude gives it a second before he gets up and follows, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching as Cam grabs a glass from the cabinets and fills it up at the fridge. 

“How’s your brother?” Claude asks finally, not even pretending like they don’t both know about the fight, and Cam just shrugs, not taking his eyes off of what he’s doing. 

“Fine, I guess,” he says distractedly. “What are we having for dinner?” 

“I don’t know,” Claude says, and he figures that’s all he’s going to get from Cam, just because of how Cam is, and so he goes with the change of topic. “How’s stir-fry sound?” 

“Can we have it with the sweet and sour sauce?” 

“Sure,” Claude says, and then Cam turns around and smiles at him. 

“Awesome,” he says, and then he heads back upstairs, his glass filled higher than it probably should be, and with nothing else to do, Claude takes out the chicken and some peppers, a head of broccoli, and gets to it. 

Removing the seeds from a green pepper, Claude thinks about how the hell he’s going to break the news to Danny. Danny’s not one to yell, not really, but that doesn’t mean he’ll handle it well, especially considering how this is the first big thing to happen with one of their boys. It sucks to be the bearer of bad news, and Claude recognizes that he has to tell Danny, but a part of him thinks maybe it would just be easier to leave him a sticky note or something. 

There’s a loud thump from upstairs, followed by laughter and a faint _Shut up!_ but Claude just ignores it and lets it go. 

Danny gets home just as Claude is finishing dinner, and he tosses his keys into the bowl by the door. Claude can’t see him, but he can hear Danny call out, “I’m just gonna run upstairs and change.” 

“No rush,” Claude says. “I can just keep this warm.” 

Danny doesn’t respond, but Claude doesn’t think much of it because he knows how Danny is, especially when it comes to being stuck in a tie and nice pants for longer than is necessary. 

“A t-shirt and shorts are just more comfortable,” Danny had explained to Cameron once, years ago, when Claude was still new and still felt like a guest in the house that was supposed to be his home. 

“That’s not it at all,” Caelan had shared with them once Danny was gone, like he was doing them a favor and telling them a secret. “It’s because the tie makes it hard for him to breathe, and if he has to wear it for too long, he’ll choke to death.” 

“That’s not true!” Cam had yelled out, jumping up onto his feet for a second before collapsing back down onto the couch. 

“Actually, it is,” Carson said calmly, nodding a little, and Claude had broken it up because he didn’t know anything back then; he was still the hired help, not yet family, and having only a sister, he hadn’t yet realized that sometimes it’s best to just let them have at it. 

When Danny comes back downstairs, he’s got the three boys in tow, Carson sulking and bringing up the rear. He looks like he’s walking the plank, and Claude wants to laugh a little at his dramatics; can’t handle the heat, don’t start fights in a middle school, and all that. 

“Caelan, can you get everyone water?” Danny asks. “Or do you guys want milk?” 

“I don’t—” Caelan starts. 

“Chocolate milk!” Cam interrupts, and Danny looks to Claude, probably because he usually knows what junk they’ve had to snack on after school. They didn’t have much, not that Claude knows, but because of the Carson fiasco, Claude still shakes his head. 

“Not today,” Danny tells them. 

“Aww, _please_?” Cameron whines. 

“You heard the man,” Claude says lightly, and he starts dishing food out onto the plates as Danny opens up the fridge and passes Caelan the gallon jug. 

“So how was school?” Danny asks as soon as they’re all sitting down, completely unaware of what that question does to the three of them. Then, mixing his stir-fry in with his rice a little bit, he asks, “Learn anything new today?” 

There’s a long silence after that, longer than when Danny usually asks that same exact question. Carson keeps eating while propping his cheek up on one closed fist, his hair falling into his eyes, and Caelan glances back and forth between him and Claude like a bomb is about to go off and he can’t wait to see the fallout. 

And then Cameron—beautiful, innocent Cameron—says, “Mr. Nikitin said that there’s no wind on the Moon, so if I went up there and built a sandcastle, it would just stay forever.” 

“Yeah? That’s cool,” Danny says, and underneath the table, someone kicks Claude in the ankle—presumably by accident, as no one’s even looking at him. “Maybe you should be an astronaut and go write _Cameron_ up there.” 

“Yeah, that’s what I want to be this week,” Cam says, and Claude hides his smile behind his water glass; last week, Cam had wanted to be a cop like Bobrovsky, and before that a fisherman like Hagelin, a filmmaker like Hartsy, a club bouncer like Marchand. 

“Better study hard then,” Claude tells him. 

“I know. That’s why—”

“I learned about fractions,” Caelan interrupts, and then, like he knows exactly what he’s doing, he looks at Carson and pointedly asks, “What did _you_ learn in school today?” 

“Nothing,” Carson mutters around a bite of chicken. 

“Nothing?” Danny asks. “What kind of school am I sending you to?” 

Claude opens his mouth to say, _Carson got sent home early today for fighting,_ only Carson looks up at Claude like he’s bracing himself for what’s coming, and when Claude opens his mouth, what actually comes out is, “Not a very good one, I guess.” 

Carson just stares at him, completely stunned and with his jaw dropped, and Caelan lets go of his fork, letting it clatter loudly against his plate. 

“What?” Caelan says in disbelief. 

“Calm down, Horace Mann,” Danny deadpans. “Your education is just fine.” 

“Who’s Horace Mann?” Cam asks, and as Danny answers, Claude feels someone kick his ankle underneath the table again. He looks around, and Carson is pointedly staring at him, so Claude just stares back and raises his eyebrows like, _What?_

Carson just tilts his head a little to the side and shrugs, and usually Claude would take that as a _thank you,_ only this time, he’s not exactly sure that it is one. 

He shrugs back. 

 

Friday morning in the Briere household is insane, and not just because of the upcoming weekend; the knowledge that the boys get to come to the pond that night and even shoot a few pucks around if they're not dead on their feet by the end of it has them chatty and energetic, right from the moment they get downstairs for breakfast. It only gets worse after school, the three of them asking all sorts of questions like, _Are you gonna score a goal tonight?_ and, _What if someone's throat gets cut like that one guy?_ and, _Yeah, but what if, though?_

By the time Danny gets home and changes into sweats, Claude's had to impose a ban on hockey talk—a definite first for him, and something he never expected to have to do—just to keep his sanity in tact. Of course, that's immediately forgotten the second Danny tells them to grab their coats and their skates, and to get in the car, but that's sort of to be expected. It's just nice it lasted at all, really. 

"Maybe there won't be enough people, and we'll have to play," Cam says, climbing into the backseat and not bothering to complain about how he always has to sit in the middle. 

"Yeah, that's not happening," Danny says, strapping himself in and turning on the car, cranking the heat. He looks back over the center console and asks, "Everyone buckled?" 

"Yeah," Caelan and Cam chorus. 

"Carson?" Danny asks. 

"Yep," Carson says, and Claude can see him in the side view mirror, staring out the window with his chin in the heel of his palm, his fingers drumming against his cheek. They haven’t talked about his fight since it happened, and a part of Claude feels like a fucking asshole for keeping it from Danny; an even larger part of him feels like it’s bad parenting to reward Carson by taking him to the Staal pond, but it’s way too late to back out now, and so Claude keeps his mouth shut. 

"Hats, gloves, scarves, coats?" Danny asks, already backing out of the driveway. "Speak now or forever hold your peace." 

"Caelan doesn't have a coat," Cam says. 

"Of course he doesn't," Danny says. 

"I don't _need_ one," Caelan stresses, "I'm fine," and Claude really, really can't wait until he gets over whatever it is that has him thinking winter coats are uncool. 

"That's 'cause you're still in the car, doofus," Carson says, and that's picking a fight if Claude's ever seen it, and so he figures it's for the best to just nip it in the bud. 

"He can use my coat if the frostbite gets too bad," he says dryly. "It's hardly the end of the world." 

"Remember that time Gretzky let us come watch?" Cam asks. "That was cool." 

"Yeah," Danny agrees, and Claude's actually pretty impressed that he doesn’t even have the GPS plugged in this time around. "That was cool; I like it when you guys get to come." 

"You should just let us come like every time," Caelan says. "We're low-maintenance." 

"Super low-maintenance," Carson agrees, nodding like he's imparting some great wisdom onto them, and Danny laughs. 

"But then how will I bribe you into doing your homework?" 

"We always do our homework without you having to bribe us," Carson says. 

"You can ask Claude," Caelan backs him up, and that shakes Claude out of just passively listening to the conversation. 

"Uh," Claude says. "Yeah, I don't know about that one," and Caelan squawks in response, like this is the ultimate betrayal. 

"Oh my god, _Claude,_ " Carson says. 

"I dunno," Cam speaks up. "I never do my homework until G makes me." 

Danny laughs again and says, "The truth comes out!" 

" _Cam!_ " Caelan hisses, and looking back, Claude can see Cam shrug like he's not at all bothered by the potential 2-on-1. 

"I don't like math," Cam says factually, and then Caelan groans, which prompts Carson to groan, and Claude can't help but laugh. 

The _thought_ of having to take the boys to hockey on a regular basis is horrifying—just because they're still so young and excitable, not because he's trying to get away from them—but Claude's honestly having such a good time tonight, and they haven't even gotten to the pond yet. He can only imagine what it'll be like in a few years, when they grow up and are old enough to play, when they stop bickering with each other and start taking on the Staals instead. Claude would be lying if he said he never thought about it and didn't look forward to it. 

"I told Mr. Nikitin that I was coming tonight," Cam tells them. 

"Yeah?" Danny asks. "And what'd he say?" 

"That I have to keep it a secret how cool he is because he plays hockey." 

"Does that mean I'm cool because I play hockey?" Danny asks. 

" _Dad,_ " Carson says, although it sounds a lot like _no,_ and it makes Claude smile. 

"I hope Jake comes," Cam says. "He said he'd make a mini-Zora for me." 

"Always a fun party trick," Claude agrees. 

"You're just jealous he won't make you anything," Cam responds, confident in his assessment, and Claude doesn't have the heart to tell him that Jake has actually carved him a lot of things, but all of them were too vulgar to show to a ten-year-old. 

"When you're right, you're right," Claude says instead, and he doesn't have to turn around to know that Cameron's looking pretty pleased with himself over that. 

 

It’s still early when Danny pulls into the long driveway at Marc’s farm, only a handful of cars parked along the side, halfway onto the frozen grass. It’s good that things are still pretty quiet, too, as opposed to the ten minutes before puck-drop when everyone’s rushing in, because Caelan undoes his seatbelt and hops out of the car before Danny’s even thrown it in park. 

“How about next time we wait until the car actually stops?” Claude deadpans, climbing out of the car himself. 

“It _was_ stopped,” Caelan protests, and Claude shoots him a look that’s supposed to call him out on purposefully being too literal. 

“Not a chance,” he says, and Danny walks over to them, looking as serious as he ever does. 

“Best behavior,” Danny warns, pointing a finger between the four of them, Claude included, “or I’m locking you in the basement for a week without food or water.” 

“But—” Caelan sputters, like he’s actually at all in trouble, and then he turns to Claude, and looks at him like Claude just sold him out to the highest bidder. “ _G._ ” 

Claude just shrugs, because none of this is his fault, and he says, “ _Tu connais la musique._ ” And then, just as he’s about to pop the trunk and have everyone grab their skate bags, he sees movement a car or two down, and—

It’s fucking Crosby. He’s over there with two Gatorades held between the fingers of one hand, halfway in his trunk and hidden by the car between them, and he’s literally not even doing anything, but Claude can’t stand him. 

So he continues on in French, “You don’t even have to speak of the devil for him to appear anymore.” 

Danny, then, because he was never equipped with a stealth mode, turns around and, when he sees Crosby, says politely, “Oh! Hey, Sid. I didn’t see you there.” 

Crosby stares at them blankly for a minute, probably debating whether or not he should man up or cut and run, before slamming his trunk and saying with a small smile, “It’s okay.” 

He shoves the Gatorades into his bag before hefting it over his shoulder, and then he stuffs his hands into his pockets. It doesn’t really seem like he knows how to act around kids—which is funny, because everything he does is one giant, fake fucking act, anyway—and so Claude’s really enjoying it when Danny says, “Boys, come thank Sid for letting you watch today.” 

All three of them look at Crosby like they’re fucking piranhas and he’s the next best meal, and Crosby just says, “Um, it’s—really, it’s not a big deal.” 

Danny ignores him, probably hell-bent on teaching the boys good manners, and he points them out as he says, “This is Caelan, Carson, and Cameron.” 

“Hi,” Crosby says. 

“Hi,” Caelan mimics, and a second later, when no one else says anything, he elbows Carson. 

“Thank you _so much_ for letting us come,” Carson says, overly earnest. 

And then Cameron looks up at Claude, and then over to Crosby, and he tilts his head. He says sweetly, “But Claude, he doesn’t _look_ like he fights like a girl.” 

Claude doesn’t even try to hold back his laugh. 

Danny cuts them both off by saying in French, “Basement. One week. No grilled cheese,” and both Caelan and Carson smile gleefully at not being the ones getting yelled at, like Danny’s at all actually threatening to lock Claude and Cam in the basement. 

“Right,” Crosby says slowly, clearly just wanting to leave and get out onto the pond, and that much, Claude can’t fault him. “I’m gonna—”

“Sid, I am so sorry,” Danny starts apologizing, and he shoots a stern look towards his boys when they start laughing again. 

“It’s okay,” Crosby says, surprisingly like he means it. “Besides, I think living with Giroux is punishment enough for them.” 

“ _Ohh!_ ” the boys all shout, Carson snapping his fingers, and Cam gives Claude’s hip a little shove. 

Crosby starts walking away, but the boys are looking at Claude expectantly, and he hates to disappoint. 

“Hold me back!” he yells, wrapping Cam’s arm around him and pretending to struggle against the grip. “ _Hold me back!_ ”

“Hold _me_ back,” Danny mutters. “I can’t believe you two.” 

“Yeah, G,” Caelan says. “You’re an _adult._ ”

“Oh, like you and Carson were any better,” Danny says, not actually mad. “Now grab your gear before I boot you guys back home.” 

“Sir, yes sir!” Caelan says with a salute, and then he dives for the trunk. It’s only one they’re all three turned around digging for their bags that a smile breaks out across Danny’s face, wide and unrestrained. 

“Oh my god,” he mouths to Claude, still smiling, and there’s really no much else that Claude can do besides smile back, just as wide. 

 

The boys don’t come often, but they came to watch once or twice before, back at the old pond, and so everyone knows them and loves teasing them. Claude watches them as they make their way through the guys, how Caelan duck a noogie from Brian Boyle, how Carson taps Landy on one shoulder and then ducks to the other side, how Cam walks straight in between Kane and Toews as they talk, his eyes wide and glued to the ice. Claude wonders if there’s a word for what he’s feeling, for the way his chest swells at seeing his Briere family and his hockey family fitting together so perfectly. 

As the five of them walk past Sharpy and Burish, Sharpy says to Danny, “I didn’t realize it was Bring Your Kid to Hockey Day…” He glances from Claude to the boys. “And you brought your sons, too!” 

Burish laughs and Claude just responds, “Yeah, yeah,” because he can’t exactly say what he wants to say with the boys around. 

“You’re a real comedian,” Carson tells Sharpy, and then to Claude, “I thought you said these guys were funny?” and that has both Bur and Sharpy erupting into laughter. 

“Baby Briere!” Sharpy crows, shaking Carson by the back of his neck in approval; Carson shrugs him off, and the guys love him. 

They finally find a spot that’s big enough for all five of them, and they drop their bags; Caelan and Carson are looking around, suitably impressed by the guys and the pond and everything, but Cam just sort of starts walking off on his own. And it’s not—there’s nowhere for him to _go,_ exactly, but it’s still best to keep an eye on him, just in case. 

Danny seems to have the same idea, because he grabs Cam by the back of his jacket and says, “Where’re you headed?” 

“Just going to say hi to Jake,” he says, and he points over to just behind the Edmonton College kids, to where Jake is sitting down, already half in his gear, lost in his head and not even aware that they’re there. 

“Hey, Jake!” Claude calls out, and when Jake looks up, Danny points down at Cam’s head; Jake smiles wide and waves Cam over, and Cam goes without even looking back. 

“Yeah, see you never,” Claude says under his breath, and Danny laughs quietly. The two of them lapse into silence as Caelan and Carson talk quietly with their heads bent together, and Claude catches snippets of the conversations around him. 

“—didn’t _work,_ ” Caelan says. “He’s so dumb.” 

“That just makes it worse,” Carson responds, and they’re most likely talking about their brother, so Claude stops listening. 

A few feet away, Hallsy says nonchalantly, “Towers must be down again. Haven’t received a text all day.” 

“You are so passive aggressive,” Ebs says, laughing a little, but the Nuge doesn’t even look entertained. 

“That joke wasn’t funny the first time you told it,” he says evenly, and Hallsy’s rolls his eyes like he’s got a few choice words to say. 

Claude never finds out what they are, though, because Brayden and Coots drop their bags next to him and sit down; Coots has a fresh hickey on the right side of his neck, and another just under his jaw, and when he notices Claude notice them, he flushes a bright red and flicks Claude off. 

“I didn’t say anything!” Claude defends himself. 

“You didn’t have to,” Coots tells him. 

Caelan and Carson turn around then, and Carson says, “Hey, Brayden, what was it that your brother mailed you like last month that got you really mad?” 

Brayden smiles small and then scrubs at his face with one open palm, a sure sign that whatever it is has him amused, but that he’d rather not let everyone know. He says, “A half-eaten cheeseburger in a box.” 

Caelan and Carson erupt into laughter and Carson says, “I told you.” 

“That doesn’t make it a good idea,” Caelan says back, and then they return to hushed tones and ignoring everyone else. 

There’s a sort of awkward pause afterwards that Claude thinks is probably only awkward on his end, because Coots is pulling up his socks and Brayden is struggling into his sweater, and Claude’s really the only one really left sitting there trying to understand the cheeseburger in a box thing. 

“Wait,” Claude finally says, when it becomes clear that neither of them are going to say anything. “Luke mailed you half a cheeseburger?” 

“Yeah,” Brayden says, like it’s an everyday occurrence. Who knows, though? For the Schenns, maybe it is. “Not completely original, because we once mailed Reemer empty candy wrappers every day for like two months, but still. Points for creativity.” 

“Shit,” Claude says, more impressed than anything else. He sort of maxes out at envelopes full of glitter, or putting dishwasher soap all over someone’s car. 

“It was really weird, actually,” Coots says. “Brayden mailed him back an unopened bottle of water, and then they laughed about it for four hours over the phone.” 

Claude blinks, and then says again, “Wait,” ignoring the many, _many_ questions he has in favor of one: “How did Carson even know about that?” 

Brayden shrugs. 

“I guess I told him when I was at your house,” he says. “Or he’s been opening my mail.” 

“It’s probably that,” Coots says. “He’s been reading your _ESPN magazine_ before it even gets to you.” 

“ _SI Kids,_ ” Claude corrects. “ _ESPN_ ’s still not at Schenner’s reading level.” 

“Yeah, thanks a lot,” Brayden says, and Coots laughs. 

“One day, you’ll be reading entire articles,” Coots reassures him, and then he takes out his teeth, ignoring Brayden as he leans over, taking up all of Coots’s personal space and nearly forcing him off-balance. 

Carson turns around to watch Coots put his retainer teeth away, his face scrunched in some weird mixture of admiration and disgust, and he says, “That’s still so gross.” 

“Yeah,” Caelan agrees, wide-eyed and nodding, but his face says something completely different, and Claude bends down to tape his other sock, just so he can hide his smile. 

 

Once Claude gets on the ice, everything about the night feels perfect: he and Danny are on the same line, backed up by Crow in goal, Bobrovsky and May-Ray are the linesmen, the boys are on the sideline, chanting and cheering, and taunting everyone that complains about a call with, _Waah! Why don’t you cry about it?_ The only thing that feels at all off is how Crosby and Malkin are on different teams and not really speaking; it kind of makes Claude wonder what’s going on, even though he doesn’t really give a fuck what happened between them. Claude thinks it’s just morbid curiosity, because he doesn’t know what else to call it. 

Danny scores a really sick goal about fifteen minutes into it—a slap shot from almost the half—which the boys completely eat up, pumping their fists and encouraging Danny to do the same, sliding across the ice on one knee. It’s kind of really nice, Claude thinks, just to be able to share this with them. 

“Ah, family,” Jonesy says, standing by the center face-off circle and shaking his head fondly. 

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Hal agrees. 

Claude’s just really happy, about the night and the boys and all of it, which is probably why it all goes to shit so fast. He doesn’t really understand what happens, because he and the Staals kind of run in different circles, but it starts when Backes checks Skinner pretty brutally, and Skinner hits the ice hard, sliding far enough across the pond that he does careening into the snowbank lining the edge. 

“What the _fuck?_ ” Eric yells, and he skates over to check that Jeff’s alright, because he’s not really getting up too fast. 

Claude thinks that’s it, only then Jared is off the benches and racing across the ice, and Jordan’s dropping his stick and yelling, “Hey, you fucker!” and both of them are sprinting right towards Backes. It’s fucking ugly, the way everything explodes after that, everyone clearing the benches and joining in the fight, either to throw some punches or to break it up. 

Claude scans the ice for Danny, since they were both on the ice when Skinner got hit. He can’t find him at first, just sees Jack Johnson trying to dig someone out of the manpile, but then he catches sight of a recognizable build, a familiar slope of the nose, and he’s found him: Danny’s breaking up an argument that’s turning really sour, when Kyle Turris says something that has Danny freeze for a split second, and then just turn and deck Turris in the jaw. Claude races over to jump in if Danny needs him, but Danny’s got it, one hand fisted in Turris’s sweater; it’s broken up a minute later, anyways, and all Danny’s got to show for it is a nasty cut just under his eyebrow. 

Off the ice, Caelan and Carson scream, “Mortal Kombat!” and Claude can’t help but laugh, not at them, but just in disbelief over everything, and over how the one day they bring the boys is just a huge shit show. Jack finally gets Cam Atkinson clear of the manpile, and the two of them skate off, Jack carrying the puck at the end of his stick as he nonchalantly skates away. Wiz skates after them a minute later, calling out, “Hey, guys— _Jack!_ ” but they don’t hear him. 

They all try to play a bit more once everything calms down, but things are tense and the guys are angry, and another fight breaks out, this time between Hartsy and Phaneuf. Everyone just piles off the ice after that in an unspoken agreement that things got out of hand, and that the night’s over. Danny’s still fuming from his fight earlier—Claude can see that in the set of his shoulders as he brushes his sweaty hair back, and so Claude skates off with him, one hand loosely balled in the side of Danny’s sweater; Danny doesn’t like to fight, but that doesn’t mean he won’t fight if he feels he needs to, and so Claude wants to stick close to him, just in case. 

“What the fuck was tonight?” Danny asks, the corners of his mouth downturned, and—fucking _Turris,_ Claude didn’t see that one coming, either. 

“Not a clue,” Claude says, and he doesn’t ask what Turris said because it doesn’t matter. 

The boys are standing at the very edge of the pond by the time they skate over, all three of them wearing identical grins, and Caelan wearing Claude’s coat. Claude can practically see them vibrating out of their skin, although Carson’s smile dims when he notices Claude looking at him; Claude doesn’t like the fact that they’re seeing this right after Carson’s fight. 

“Oh my _god,_ ” Caelan says, stepping aside to let Danny and Claude off the ice. “That was crazy! You’re bleeding and everything!” 

“I am?” Danny asks, immediately a different person now that he’s around the boys, his face less pinched, shoulders less hunched. He swipes his hand along one side of his face and then pulls it back, looking at his fingers for blood. 

“Other side,” Carson says, and Danny repeats the gesture, still looking surprised when his fingers come back red. 

“Is this what you guys do _every_ time?” Cam asks, wary like he’s not sure he wants to know the answer. 

“This isn’t normal,” Danny says in good humor. “Most times, we actually play hockey.” 

Claude nods in agreement and says, “Besides, your dad’s only been in like, three fights since I’ve met him—”

“ _Three?_ ” Carson asks, and Claude’s actually lucky because before he has the chance to answer, BizNasty comes walking over in full gear and flip-flops, medicine kit in hand, and Cam is inching closer to Claude’s side. 

“Alright, gents,” Biz says in a falsetto. “Which one of you ordered a sexy nurse?” 

“You’re a _doctor,_ ” Caelan says, mostly under his breath, and Biz must not hear him, because he doesn’t respond. Instead, he pulls on some gloves and wipes off the cut near Danny’s eyebrow with gauze. 

“That’s a rough one,” Biz says. “Probably should’ve taken care of it earlier, but you’re still alive, eh? Just a couple of stitches, and you’ll be good as—well. Hey, Briere men, come look at this.” All three of the boys, Cam included, lean in closer as Biz takes out a needle and thread. “This is going to hurt.” 

“Like one to ten, though,” Carson asks. “How much?” 

Danny responds dryly, “I’ll let you know,” and when the needle first goes through his skin, the boys let out a cheer of disgust. 

“You got in a fight, Dad,” Carson reminds everyone. “That was so cool.” 

“I can’t _wait_ to tell James,” Caelan says. 

“I’m glad my discomfort provides you with a good story for your friends,” Danny says, and that makes Biz throw his head back and really laugh. For one dangerous moment, Claude thinks he’s the only person over the age of thirteen who’s actually watching the needle. 

“Danny B, it’s provided _me_ with a good story for my friends,” Biz says. “You’re so cool; be _my_ dad.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Danny says, and then without moving his head, he glances out towards the pond. 

Claude figures what he must be thinking, and picks up where Danny left off by saying, “Why don’t you guys go skate for a bit before we head out?” And those must be the magic words, because the boys can’t get out of there fast enough, the three of them rushing back to their gear. 

“I’m gonna steal your kids one day,” Biz tells them. 

Cameron grabs his skate bag and drags it back over to sit next to Claude, and a few feet away, Malkin walks up to Crosby looking so fucking hopeful; Claude wants to tell him that it’s a lost cause, and he should get out while he still can. 

“Gonch say he give me ride home,” Malkin says, and Crosby just blinks at him from where he’s sitting, taking off his skates. 

“Okay,” he says. 

The two of them look at each other for a second, and Claude wonders if it’s as awkward for them to be a part of as it is for him to overhear. Eventually, though, Malkin shakes his head and says, “See you, Sid,” and walks away. 

Claude wants to tell Crosby that he’s a fucking idiot, because he is, and because Claude hates him, but at least he’s been leaving Claude alone while he’s been so wrapped up in Malkin. The only reason he doesn’t is because Cam leans into him and grabs his attention before he can. 

“Hey, G,” he says quietly, “when can I play hockey with you and Dad?” 

And that’s something Claude can’t answer and doesn’t get to decide, anyway, and so he just responds honestly, says, “I dunno, bud, but I’m counting the days.” 

Cam takes a second to think on it, and then he nods, says, “Wanna come out and play with us?” 

And Claude looks at the ice, at Caelan and Carson snowing each other, at how they’ve somehow talked Bryz into minding the net for them, and then he looks down at Cam, at the way he’s smiling, and his skates, and the way he taped his stick, and Claude really, really does. 

“Bet you a hot chocolate that I crush you guys,” he says, and then he hops onto the ice, leaving Cameron on the side of the pond, yelling and waving his stick, rushing to catch up. 

 

Claude wakes up the next morning to someone banging on his bedroom door as if it were a drum, and he’s alert for just long enough to realize what’s going on, and then he flops back down onto his pillow. He calls out, “G’away.” 

“C’mon, G,” Carson says, and then he opens the door and sticks his head inside. “Dad’s making French toast.” 

“Ngh,” Claude groans, but because that’s actually the one meal Danny can make really well, he puts on his best Parisian accent before saying, “ _Pain perdu? Oui, oui, monsieur!_ ”

“Oh my god,” Carson says, but he leaves it at that, and just rolls his eyes before ducking back out into the hall. 

Claude only gives himself another minute or so in bed before rolling off the side of the mattress and stumbling to his feet. He’s only in a ratty pair of sweats, and so he pulls on a t-shirt and slips his feet into a pair of moccasin slippers before heading downstairs to the kitchen. 

Cam’s voice floats up the stairs as he’s walking down the hall, “—so cool, because he’s been playing forever, and I still scored on him,” and Claude doesn’t know why he thought, even for a second, that they wouldn’t spend all morning just talking about hockey. 

“Yeah?” Danny asks, even though Claude knows he saw the goal. “What was your celly like?” 

“I did it just like you,” Cam says. “A big fist pump, like—”

Claude walks into the kitchen just in time to see Cam drop to one knee, mimicking Danny’s go-to celebration. Carson laughs—not _at_ Cam, and not meanly, just out of excitement over the past night—and Cam looks proud at earning that reaction; he laughs, too. 

“Morning,” Claude says, shuffling in. 

He’s about to head right over to the coffee pot, only then Caelan jerks a thumb towards Claude’s spot at the kitchen table and says, “Poured you some juice,” and so Claude settles. 

“Thanks,” he says, dropping himself down into his seat. 

Danny’s standing at the kitchen counter, laying eggy bread out onto their large griddle. He’s wearing gym shorts and an long-sleeve t-shirt from a 5k run a few years ago, and when he hears Claude, he turns and smiles at him over his shoulder. 

“Did you guys talk about outer space at all?” Danny asks, still talking to Cam. 

“I told him about there not being wind on the moon, but he already knew that,” Cam says. “And I don’t want to be an astronaut anymore, so I didn’t really listen when he started talking about the Big Bang.” 

“You don’t want to be an astronaut anymore?” Claude asks, surprised. He missed that one. 

“Just because you like that one guy’s _tattoos_ doesn’t mean you want to be a _librarian,_ ” Caelan says, like he’s rehashing an old argument. 

“No tattoos,” Danny says. “Not until you’re married, and not even then.” 

“I don’t want any,” Cam says. “That was Carson.” 

“I don’t want any either,” Carson says. “I just liked them.” 

“ _But,_ ” Cam says loudly, overtop of everyone. “Now I want to own a coffee shop. Geno said that he’d name a drink after me, if I wanted, and—”

“ _Geno?_ ” Claude asks, surprised by Cam’s use of such a familiar nickname, although he goes largely ignored. _Claude_ doesn’t even call him Geno, but then again, he supposes it wouldn’t really occur to a ten-year-old to call someone by their last name. He wonders when they even had time to talk. 

“—so I told him that I really liked hot chocolate and hot cider, and he said he’d see what he could do.” 

“Yeah?” Danny says. “I guess we’ll have to stop by sometime and make sure he doesn’t forget. Hey, pass me the plates?” 

“Oh!” Cam says, like he forgot they were waiting to eat. “Sure.” 

“So, like,” Caelan hedges, “maybe we could go back to the pond sometime. That could be cool.” 

“You’re still not playing with everyone,” Danny tells him, starting to plate some of the French toast. 

“I know!” Caelan insists. “I just think it could be cool.” 

“Yeah,” Carson agrees. “And Segs said he’ll bring his stencils the next time we come, so—”

“ _No tattoos,_ ” Danny stresses again. 

“These ones aren’t permanent, Dad. I googled it.” 

Danny hands two filled plates to Cam to bring over to the table, and when he tries to carry the last three over himself, Claude stops being so lazy and stands up to grab one of them from him. 

Danny says, “How about we just eat some French toast and we’ll talk about you going back another time?” 

“Fine,” Caelan agrees, and since he’s sort of the voice of the group, the other two follow his lead. 

“ _Oui, oui!_ ” Claude says, back in his best Parisian accent. “ _Bon appétit!_ ”

The reaction from all three of the boys is immediate, a simultaneously groaned, “ _Claude._ ”

Danny just laughs. 

 

After breakfast, the boys decide to relive the night before by pushing all the furniture in the living room out of the way to play knee hockey. Jake made them a whole bunch of mini-sticks ages ago, all to the exact same measurements and with the exact same paint job, which means that there are enough so they all get to play, Claude and Danny versus their boys, and when one of the sticks finally breaks after a few years of heavy use and abuse, they’ve got plenty extra. 

“That was my favorite goal,” Carson says when Danny tries—and fails—to do a spin-o-rama on the carpet. “From last night, I mean, when Kopi did the spin-o-rama. He was really cool.” 

“Oh yeah?” Danny asks, retrieving the ball from where it went, halfway across the room and on the couch cushions. “I get no credit for trying one just now?” 

“You didn’t even make it,” Caelan points out, catching the ball when Danny tosses it to him. 

“And this isn’t even real hockey,” Carson adds. 

“One day,” Danny says, shaking his head like he’s disappointed, but smiling like he’s loving it. “One day you’ll realize how cool I am.” 

Caelan and Carson just laugh like it’s ridiculous, and since it seems like the game is paused for a minute, Claude stands up just to give his knees a break. He watches as Caelan juggles the ball back and forth at the end of his stick, and how he tosses it lightly into the air as if he’ll be able to catch it easily on his tape like a puck. Things are a lot more difficult with the ball, but still, Claude’s impressed. 

“My favorite goal was, um. Marek’s,” Cam says, and then he looks around, adds, “Is that his name?” 

“Yeah,” Claude answers. “Between the legs? That was a sick goal.” 

“Really sick,” Cam says, nodding. 

Caelan must get bored, though, because before anyone else can say anything, he cuts in with, “Can we just keep playing?” 

“Alright,” Cam says, like he’s really saying, _Calm down, crazy,_ and then they return to the game, the boys outscoring Claude and Danny two to one. It’s a lot of fun, a lot of innocent roughing, like Danny sitting on Carson so that Claude can take the ball towards the net, and Cam ignoring his stick in favor of squeezing Claude’s shoulders, causing him to hunch and twist away, letting Caelan score. It’s just really nice, even though they do this kind of thing all the time, and everyone’s laughing, and Claude’s just really happy. 

And then he thinks now is the perfect time to break the news, to just say it, _I’m moving out._ Everyone’s there, and they’re all in good spirits, and this is basically as good of a moment as Claude’s ever going to get, and so Claude looks over towards Danny, just to give him the heads up. Danny’s already looking back at him, because he’s thinking along the same lines, and he smiles in encouragement. 

Claude licks his lips and finds that his mouth is impossibly dry. 

“Hey, guys,” Claude starts. “There’s something I need to—”

And then there is a huge crash as Caelan sends the road ball flying into a table lamp and it crashes to the floor, broken to pieces long before it ever hits the carpet. 

“ _Ooh,_ ” Cam says, like someone got called to the principal’s office, and Caelan immediately turns bright red. 

“It was an accident!” he insists. 

“I know,” Danny says, because he was right there; he saw what happened: Carson was in front of the goal, and Caelan tried to flick it over him and into the net, only the ball went wide and took out a lamp. It was an honest mistake. “But you have to be more careful in the future, because someone could get hurt.” 

He stands up and brushes off his knees, getting ready to clean up the broken pieces. 

“I was careful _now,_ ” Caelan says, tossing down his stick, and then he mutters, “I don’t want to play anymore,” and stalks out of the room, heading upstairs. 

There’s a moment of silence once he’s gone, and then Claude says, “Okay, then,” just to break the tension. 

“He’s always so crazy nowadays,” Cam says. “Don’t ever let me get like that.” 

“Oh, you’ll definitely get like that,” Claude tells him, but Cam just shakes his head. 

“No way. Never.” 

Danny smiles and then tells Cam, “Good, because I like you just the way you are,” and then the four of them clean up the hockey gear and the broken lamp while Caelan inevitably sulks upstairs. It sucks because Claude was so sure that was his moment, but in the end it wasn’t, and Claude’ll just have to find some other time to break the news. He wishes he could just be done with it, though; worrying about it all the time is getting old. 

The honest truth is that, afterwards, he forgets about Caelan and his tantrum because the boys all scatter, and Danny’s too busy reading to entertain him. Claude watches two episodes of sports news, both of which report on the same four football stories over and over, and when he get too bored, he does a lap around the house: Cam’s drawing and Carson’s playing his DS, and Caelan is nowhere to be found. 

So Claude heads to Caelan’s room, gives it his courtesy double knock, and then opens the door. Caelan’s on his DS, too, same as Carson was, but the second the door’s open, he tosses it aside and glowers. 

“Hey,” Claude says. “Did you want to—are you still upset about earlier?” 

“No,” Caelan says shortly. Claude doesn’t exactly believe it. 

“Okay. Because you know it’s just a lamp, right?” Claude asks. “Your dad knows it was an accident.” 

“I get it; I’m not a fucking idiot.” 

“Whoa, language,” Claude immediately responds, but he doesn’t take it much farther than that, because he gets that Caelan’s upset and doesn’t mean anything by it. The boys are growing up; learning to curse is a part of that, and it was bound to happen eventually. When it becomes clear that Caelan’s not going to say anything else, Claude asks, “Are you _sure_ you’re okay?” and Caelan just explodes. 

“Oh my _god._ Fuck you, Claude. What do you fucking care?” he asks, the look on his face angry and hurt. “Just go away.” 

And Claude just—

It just catches him so off-guard that he stands there a minute, completely stunned, and it probably shows all over his face. Yes, Caelan’s the Briere with the biggest attitude, but it’s never been like this, and never been directed at Claude. For what feels like the longest while, Claude honestly doesn’t even know how to react. 

“I get that you’re upset,” he finally says, “but that _does not_ mean you get to talk to me like that. I did nothing wrong, and you’re taking your bad mood out on me.” 

“So leave, and then I won’t get to do that.” 

“Right,” Claude says, patting the doorframe twice. “I don’t want to deal with you when you’re like this, anyway.” 

And then Claude just leaves. He doesn’t know what else to do, just walks down the stairs in a semi-daze and tries not to think of Caelan cursing, or of Caelan cursing _at him,_ or any of it. 

“Everything alright?” Danny asks when he walks in, not looking up from his book. 

“Yeah,” Claude says faintly, and he turns the tv back on. 

 

It’s a nice, low-key Saturday for the rest of the day, something for which Claude is grateful, because he’s still reeling from the way Caelan snapped at him earlier over nothing at all. And it’s not that he thinks Caelan at all even meant it—he knows Caelan didn’t, and knows that Caelan knows he cares—but it’s the first time any of the boys have really lashed out at him like that. It wasn’t just an _I hate you_ tossed around carelessly, yelled during a tantrum over bedtimes and dessert; those hurt each of the few times Claude has had to hear them, but this is something totally different, _Fuck you,_ and, _What do you fucking care?_ like he doesn’t know Claude at all, like he doesn’t know just how fucking much Claude _does_ care. 

So he’s glad, at any rate, that he doesn’t have any plans with the guys and instead chose to just hang in this weekend. Driving Cam to soccer practice will keep him busy, and he honestly gets a kick out of watching ten-year-olds pretend they’re Ronaldo. 

“What are you talking about?” Danny asks, pulling a face. “You don’t have to do any of that; go enjoy your weekend.” 

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Claude says, and he pries the car keys out of Danny’s fingers, hangs them up on the key hook before telling Cam to grab his gear. 

“You’re really not just saying that?” Danny asks, giving him a critical once-over, as if the way Claude tied his shoes might imply that he’s lying. 

“Really not,” Claude says. “Cam’s my partner-in-crime.” And then when Cam walks by with a bag in his hand and his cleats, tied together by the laces, draped over the back of his neck, Claude grabs his shoulders and shakes him back and forth a little, saying, “He keeps me young.” 

“Wha-a-a-at?” Cam asks, his voice going up and down, dragging out the word as Claude shakes him. 

“Young? He’s giving me gray hair,” Danny says, shaking his head, like, _What a shame._

So Claude drives Cam to practice, the two of them singing along to country radio on the way there, and when Claude brings up the subject of Caelan, Cam just rolls his eyes and says, “I don’t know, he’s just got like, some stuff going on,” and then won’t say another word about it. 

Dinner that night is easy, just Chicken Alfredo made with jarred sauce, and a small salad on the side, but it’s something that the boys love, and they eat so much of it that there’s never any leftovers. He makes it while Carson and Cameron play videogames, and while Danny naps on the couch in the sitting room; he was asleep when Claude and Cam got back two hours ago, some history book open on his chest, and they didn’t have it in them to wake him, not if he was able to fall asleep even with Carson playing Final Fantasy in the next room over. 

“Hey, Carson,” Claude calls out. “Wanna make sure everyone’s got something to drink?” 

Claude can hear the tv shut off in the other room, and then both Carson and Cameron make their way into the kitchen. 

Cam walks right up to the pot where Claude’s tossing the pasta with the sauce, and then he sticks his nose about an inch away from the rim, taking a deep breath and saying, “Mmm!” 

“Get outta here,” Claude says, and he lightly pinches a spot on Cam’s side that has him squealing with laughter and twisting to get away. 

“Just water?” Carson asks, pulling glasses down from the cabinets. 

“I want milk!” Cam says. 

Claude cuts off that train of thought before it fully takes off and says, “Not chocolate.” 

“I know. I don’t want chocolate milk.” 

Danny shuffles into the kitchen then, rubbing at one eye with a loosely curled fist. He looks sheepish as he yawns, saying, “I passed right out on that couch.” 

“Yeah,” Claude agrees, fondness spreading in his chest at the way Danny’s hair is flattened on one side, and sticking up wildly on the other. “But a little nap never hurt anyone.” 

“I guess,” Danny says. “Thanks for making dinner. Hey, Cam, can you go grab your brother?” 

Cam rocks forward onto his toes and his face scrunches up a little like he’s going to complain, but in the end, he doesn’t say anything, and instead races up the stairs for Caelan. 

Claude starts dishing out pasta, making sure that everyone has some chicken. Once he’s got two of them loaded, he turns to hand the plates over to Carson, but Carson’s still setting out the drinks, and instead, Danny takes them from his hands. 

“Got it,” Danny says. “And I’ll do dishes.” 

“ _Dad!_ ” Cam hollers from upstairs, and his voice is accompanied by the sound of his feet pounding along the hallway and down the stairs. He races into the kitchen and comes skidding to a halt, brushing his hair back off of his forehead. He says, “Caelan’s not coming down; he says he’s in a bad mood and he doesn’t want to see us.” 

Claude and Danny both just stand there for a second, trying to figure out how to react, and Claude can see it written all over Danny’s face that he’s debating making Caelan come down anyway. 

“What happened?” Danny finally asks. “He was fine this morning, and then it’s like a switch flipped.” 

“Not a clue,” Claude says. He’d like to know himself, to be honest. 

“Alright, well, if he’s in a bad mood, I’m not going to bother dragging him down here,” Danny says, like he’s at a loss for what else to do. “He’ll just ruin our dinner.” 

It’s probably for the best, Claude knows, because Caelan never shies away from saying what he really feels, and if they make him come down just to prove a point, everyone else will end up just as miserable as he is. Claude turns back to the stove, and he can recognize this for what it is: a teenage tantrum, rather than anything that actually has to do with him. He makes Caelan a plate of food, anyway, just so there’s some left for him when he inevitably comes down to eat in the middle of the night. 

“Hey,” Danny says quietly, nudging Claude as the two of them walk to the table, where Cam and Carson are already sitting, eager to start eating. “Everything okay?” 

Claude thinks about telling him what happened, about saying, _Caelan’s started cursing, and he thinks that I don’t care about him,_ and about finally dropping the bomb of, _Carson got in a fight at school, and I handled it, but I don’t know if it was my place to,_ or about admitting, _You seem so worried that I’ll forget about you guys when I move out, but mostly I’m just thinking it’ll be the other way around._

Instead, Claude says, “Yeah, of course,” and rolls his eyes when Danny keeps looking at him like it’s not. 

 

Sunday is a lot like Saturday, more of the same in every way except for one: When Caelan comes shuffling down the stairs, swallowed up in oversized sweats and an old sweatshirt of Danny’s, he looks at Claude and smiles. 

“Hey, G,” he says, smiling sleepily. “Thanks for saving me dinner last night.” 

Claude stills where he is, on the couch watching the History Channel, and he says, “Uh. Yeah, no problem.” 

It’s the weirdest thing because, after that, everything just snaps right back into place, and Caelan’s back to his usual self. The boys don’t comment on it when they wake up, and neither does Danny, and Caelan gets as close to apologizing as he’s going to get by bringing Claude a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch filled so high that it almost sloshes over the edge. 

Claude doesn’t want any cereal, but he eats it anyway, he and Caelan splayed out together on the couch; he’s not quite finished by the time Carson wakes up and dive-bombs the two of them by leaping over the back of the couch, but none of it spills, and even if it had, Claude’s not really sure he’d be able to bring himself to care. 

He’s in a pretty good mood by the time he and Danny get to Marc’s farm that night, he and Danny arguing over which of them gets to play center if they wind up on one line. 

“But I _never_ play right wing; you play right wing all the time,” Danny points out as they walk along the side of the house. 

“ _Exactly my point,_ ” Claude stresses. “Maybe you should give it a go for a while.” 

“I’m too old to try new things.” 

“Really?” Claude asks, rolling his eyes. “Maybe I should get rid of you and trade up to a newer model, then.” 

“Maybe we _should_ take a break,” Danny agrees. “See other forwards.” 

Claude laughs and then bumps into Danny, causing him to stumble just slightly. 

“Yeah,” Danny says. “If that’s how you hit on the ice, I definitely want to swap you out.” 

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Claude says without any heat to it, and before Danny gets the chance to respond, his phone goes off. 

“Right,” Danny says, digging it out of his pocket and checking the screen. “What are the odds they burnt the house down —yes, Cameron?” 

“I’m gonna go gear up,” Claude says, jerking his head towards the ice, and Danny just waves him on. 

“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” Danny whispers to Claude. And then louder, “No; there is no situation in which it is okay for you to use the steak knives when I’m not home… But Claude counts as an adult. Caelan’s thirteen; he doesn’t fit the bill.” 

Claude laughs and keeps walking, imagining all the excuses Cam might have come up with for needing a steak knife, and then he rounds the corner of the house to the pond. There are a handful of guys already there—Zetterberg, Tavares, Quickie, Flower—but no one that Claude’s really friends with, and so he gives them a wave, calls out, “Hey, guys,” and then picks out a spot for him and Danny to set up. 

“I was gonna ask him if he heard from Sid,” Flower says to Quickie, “but I already fucking know the answer to that one.” 

“So maybe he just got bogged down at work,” Quickie offers. 

“ _Bogged down at work?_ ” Flower repeats incredulously. “Sid would rather quit his job than—hey, Geno, is Sid with you?” 

“No,” Malkin says, and it’s just one word—one syllable—but the way it’s said is terse, and something about it has Claude looking back over his shoulder. 

Malkin’s got his bag slung over his back, his head down and his eyebrows furrowed. On the ice, Claude will admit that Malkin can be scary as fuck, but now he just looks sort of unhappy, and lost in his thoughts. 

Although, now that Flower points it out, it _is_ weird for Crosby not to be here ages before the first guy, setting up and testing the ice and talking to Marc. Claude doesn’t care, because hockey without Crosby is sort of ideal, but he _is_ kind of curious, because he thought Malkin was tied to Crosby’s hip, and Crosby tied to hockey. 

Claude goes back to ignoring them and reaches down to shove his foot into one of his skates. Out on the ice, Skinner and Jared are laughing, putting the cage on its pegs, and when Claude’s not paying attention, too busy lacing his skate and listening to Skinner say, _I’m not going to Eric’s office hours if I can make him explain it to me in the car,_ Malkin drops down into the space next to him. 

Malkin doesn’t say hi, doesn’t say anything, just twists his mouth into something that’s supposed to resemble a greeting before turning back to look out over the ice, his body leaning forward and his elbows resting on his knees. 

“Hi,” Claude says, because he can’t just say nothing, and it comes out sounding a lot like a question. It is a question: _What the fuck are you doing?_ and, _Why sit here when there are a million other open seats?_ and, _What happened to you?_

“Hey,” Malkin says a beat later, almost like he wasn’t going to respond at all but then changed his mind, and Claude wishes he sat somewhere else—anywhere else—because this is awkward and he doesn’t want to deal with it, and doesn’t really know how to. 

“So, uh,” he says, scrambling for something to say to fill the silence. If Malkin’s at all bothered either way by it, he doesn’t show it. “Where’s Crosby?” 

“Sid?” Malkin asks, still looking forward out onto the ice. “Don’t know.” 

“Oh,” Claude says, nodding, and then he mimics Malkin’s position, leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. That explains it, then: he and Crosby clearly had it out. Claude doesn’t really know what to say, because he and Danny have never really had any big fights about anything, the two of them just sort of immediately falling in sync. They argue about orange juice pulp sometimes— _It’s not good juice unless you can chew it,_ Danny says, which is just so wrong on so many different levels—but that’s really just bickering. So Claude just takes a shot in the dark and says out towards the ice, “Well, I mean, whatever happened…Knowing him, it’s probably not your fault.” 

And the thing is, he doesn’t even know why he says it, except that Malkin looks tired, and not that it’s at all the same, but it kind of reminds him of Danny, back when Danny was at his worst. Plus, Claude really _wouldn’t_ be surprised if it wasn’t Malkin’s fault. 

Claude looks out at the ice for a minute longer, at Hallsy and Ebs warming up by seeing who can skate on one foot for longer, and then he nods his head once, decisively, before hunching over to lace his skates. 

Malkin turns to him suddenly and says, “I just—one minute, I think we friends, and next minute, we not. Hot, cold; hot, cold. Is just…I don’t know.” 

“Yeah, but aren’t, uh,” Claude says, and then he stops, clears his throat just to buy himself some time. “Aren’t you guys dating?” 

Malkin looks genuinely shocked, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead. 

“Me and Sid?” he asks, and his mouth twists a little; he shakes his head as he lets out a laugh that’s nothing more than air out of his nose. “No, we not dating.” 

“Oh,” Claude says again. He could’ve sworn—didn’t Jared say Malkin was Crosby’s boyfriend? Claude’s pretty sure that’s what Coots said. 

“Sid…Is not like that, for Sid,” Malkin says, and this conversation is just not at all something that Claude wants to be having, and so he’s just going to leave. He doesn’t owe Malkin anything; there’s nothing keeping him there. 

“Sucks,” Claude says, not as a sign of agreement, but just something to fill the space, and then he stands up, grabs his stick. He gets about two steps closer to the ice before the guilt sets in and forces him to turn around to say, “It is like that. For him. I fucking hate him, but even I could tell you that.” 

He doesn’t wait for Malkin’s response, just turns around and hops right onto the ice, so he can start skating and forget any of that ever happened. 

 

As it always goes with hockey, things take a turn for the worse when someone gets frustrated. It all starts out light—Brayden beating Jake on a fast brake and chirping, _Jakey, mix in a salad,_ and Cabbie joking with Skinner that short on-ice shifts mean short off-ice shifts, _if you know what I mean_ —but a little fight breaks out somewhere near the end of the second period. Claude doesn’t see it because he’s on the bench, leaning back and looking down along the row of guys to coo at Reemer and call him a pigeon, but then everyone lets out a bunch of shouts, and when Claude looks over, Malkin and Coots are being pulled away from each other. 

Coots’s helmet is spinning on the ice, and as Coots skates away, he combs his sweaty hair back once with his fingers, and again when it falls back in his face. Beau guides him off the ice, carefully staying in between him and Malkin, and Claude wants to laugh because if Malkin wanted to pound the shit out of Coots, Beau standing in the way wouldn’t make the slightest difference. 

“You kidding?” Malkin asks, defending himself to Dougie, Beau’s other linesman. “He cross-check me like six times, and you do nothing!” 

Coots hears that and turns back around, still being pulled off the ice by Beau. He shouts back, “Then maybe you shouldn’t fucking say that shit to me. You knew what you were doing!” 

Malkin just rolls his eyes and scoffs, and at the other end of the bench, Hartsy pulls Brayden back by the neck of his sweater and tells him to park it. Claude gets that Brayden wants to go out there, same as Claude probably would if it were Danny, but Coots is fine and can hold his own, especially in this fight. 

And—it’s not even a fight, that’s the thing. It’s a nothing of a fight, really, and although both Coots and Malkin get some minutes in the bin for it, neither of them is bruised or busted. That’s just the beginning, though, as it always is whenever one team starts getting outscored three to one; everyone’s at the extremes, one way or another, Claude included. 

Anisimov pulls a really fucking annoying move—one that everyone does, though, and so it’s not really the end of the world—and he cuts in front of Claude time and time again when Claude doesn’t have the puck and isn’t _near_ the puck, and stopping Claude from getting to where he wants to go. When they’re down at one end, everyone setting up for a face-off, Claude decides he’s fucking sick of it and calls out to Dougie, “Hey, watch the interference here, eh?” 

Dougie looks at him unimpressed for a minute, and then says long-sufferingly, “Hey, Arti, I’m watching the interference. Don’t do it.” 

“Don’t do it,” Claude mimics, taunting Anisimov, and Anisimov just sort of rolls his eyes before skating away. It’s all normal; Claude’s being an asshole, but everyone’s an asshole when they’re on the ice. 

“Wait a minute,” Matt Hendricks yells out, and then he motions between Claude and Anisimov with his stick. “That’s fucking bullshit! There was no interference.” 

“I never said there was,” Dougie tells him. 

“Can we just go back to playing?” Dubi says. And then to Matt, “This has nothing to do with you, anyways.” 

“This has nothing to do with _you,_ ” Matt says, shoving Dubi a little, and that’s when Prusty steps in, and shoves Matt back. 

“Hey,” Prusty says, “if you wanna go, we can go.” 

“Whoa,” Claude says, and he wedges himself between the two of them, just trying to diffuse the situation because it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to. “Come on, let’s just play some fucking hockey, okay?” 

“Yeah,” PK says over everyone else, all the little arguments that are starting to break out as the guys comment on everything. “Besides, Prusty, you go home to MP with a shiner, and she’s not going to be too happy.” 

He says it seriously, honestly, and he probably isn’t thinking anything of it, because he’s friends with both Prusty _and_ Maripier, but the second the words are out of his mouth, Claude knows it was a bad move. 

“Yeah, Prusty,” Matt says. “Get the fuck out of my face if you want to go home in one piece.” Prusty rolls his eyes, probably figuring that it’s not worth it, and he starts to skate away. That looks like it, except then Matt adds, “And say hi to your girl for me.” 

And Prusty just loses it, turns around and decks Matt in the face, and Claude jerks out of the way so that he doesn’t get hurt. Matt throws a punch in return, and when he’s pulling his arm back a second time, his elbow catches Claude hard in the mouth, and Claude looses his balance on the ice, clearly not expecting it. 

Someone catches him before he can fall back and hit the ice, but the taste of iron is already spreading through his mouth, and he says, “Fuck,” and pokes at the back of his teeth with his tongue. 

Around him, everyone’s going ballistic. Prusty’s being hauled back by PK, but Hartsy jumps right in for him—for Claude, really—and they keep fighting, all the guys milling about, or joining in, or just watching. Gags pulls Ebs away from the scrum, and Schlemko, with his arm around Ebs’s neck, goes easily with him. 

“You okay?” Danny asks. His hands are under Claude’s arms, on his ribcage, because _of course_ Danny’s the one right behind him, helping him keep upright on the ice. 

“Yeah,” Claude says, standing on his own and turning around. “Yeah. Shit, my tooth is fucking—”

He sticks his thumb in his mouth and puts it right behind one of his front teeth, and when he does, the tooth pops out, and his gums bleed like hell. 

“Oh, shit,” Danny says dumbly, stunned, and it’s the complete opposite of how he is when one of the boys gets hurt, when he’s Mr. Dad with all the answers. 

“M’fine,” Claude says, and he spits a bit of blood out onto the ice. “Shit, I can’t fucking believe it.” 

Something happens then that causes Danny to be shoved into Claude, but it’s not hard enough that either of them lose their balance. Danny can’t see it because it’s behind him, but it’s just Tazer, and so Claude writes it off as nothing until he sees Tazer launching himself at Thornton like a man possessed. 

“Jonny—” Kaner says, his hand out in an aborted gesture probably meant to stop him, and then he pulls a face, like, _Oh well,_ or maybe, _This is going to be ugly,_ and just stands back, watches the fight and how Soupy jumps in to fight with them. 

It’s ridiculous and frustrating, just one massive fight that broke out over nothing. It broke out over _nothing,_ Claude was _right there,_ and even though he wasn’t even a part of any of it, he’s walking out missing a tooth. He’s just so fucking pissed; he loves a good fight, he honestly does, but this time he basically just got suckered over nothing, and although he wants to fight, he’s not exactly mad at anyone, just at the situation. When he sees Rinny getting his ass handed to him by Guddy, though, he shakes Danny’s hand off the back of his sweater and skates over, joins in on the fight and doesn’t stop until it’s being broken up, because he likes Rinny, and because he doesn’t know why not. 

For the first five minutes or so after everyone’s pulled apart and told to cool down, Claude just sort of skates around by himself and stews. He’s missing another fucking tooth—a front one—and his mouth tastes like blood, the side of his face throbbing. He doesn’t have the money for this shit, but he’s gotta find a dentist anyway, and walk around looking like a fucking idiot until his new fakes get made. 

He thinks that maybe if things were different, if this were a professional league or something, there’d be fines and suspensions and all sorts of things that would make guys like them a lot less eager to join in on a fight. 

Still skating around, he overhears Henrik, standing off to the side with his mask up on his forehead, saying, “Got a shoot tomorrow; I don’t want to break my nose.” 

“Who the fuck are you?” Flower asks. “Jacques Plante?” 

Henrik just laughs. 

By the time Claude’s cooled down a bit, Hartsy’s already got his phone out and is documenting the whole thing. Claude would be mad about it, but mostly it’s just what Hartsy does, and so he goes with it. 

“Smile, G,” Hartsy says when he sees him. “You’re almost missing as many chiclets as Ovie!” 

“Fuck you,” Claude says, not laughing, but not really meaning the insult, either. “I’m beautiful.” 

“Bro, I’m so sorry,” they hear Biz say, and they both turn to the sound, Hartsy walking closer to get it on camera. “We’re gonna have to amputate.” 

Max is on the ground, Biz hunched over by his legs, and Claude wonders how long they’ve been there for, and what happened. Max laughs a bit, strained, and he says, “You guys are fucking assholes; I don’t know why I hang out with you.” 

“’Cause you love us, Talbo,” Hartsy says, and Claude looks around for Danny. 

Claude’s sick of this shit; he’s ready to go home. 

 

When they pull into their driveway, the lights are all still on in the house, meaning the boys are still up even though they’re supposed to have gone to bed an hour ago. Claude’s not surprised, and he doesn’t think Danny is, either; they’re both fully aware that the only reason the boys got caught is because the night at Marc’s ended early. 

Claude doesn’t bother getting his bag out of the car, just unlocks the front door and walks inside, still in a foul mood. His mouth hurts like a bitch, and he doesn’t want to have to pay to get new retainer, even though he knows he has to. Carts went to a guy who basically put all of his teeth back in after he was high-sticked last year, and so even though Jeff’s didn’t show tonight, Claude texts him for it, and he hooks Claude up with the guy’s number. At least there’s that. 

The second Claude’s inside, Caelan stands up and drops his Xbox controller on the ground; Cam freezes exactly where he is, kneeling on the carpet with a handful of Cheetos stuffed in his mouth. 

“Oh, um,” Carson tries from the couch. “ _Wow,_ look at the ti—” 

“Nope,” Danny says. “That’s not working; don’t even bother.” 

Caelan says, “But Dad—”

“Pack it up and get to bed,” Danny says. “Alright?” 

Claude doesn’t stick around, his mood making him want to just be by himself to stew. As he heads into the kitchen, he hears Cam say, “But why’s G got the frozen peas?” and Danny just respond with an exasperated, “Cam, get a napkin if you’re going to spit that out.” 

In the kitchen, Claude tosses the peas into the freezer and then grabs the salt. He runs the tap water to get it warm, and while he does, he takes down a glass, scoops some salt into it before finally putting the glass under the faucet. It’s nasty as fuck, swishing salt water around in his mouth, and it only makes him angrier to have to do it in the first place, but it works, keeps away infection and keeps the gum socket clean or whatever, and so Claude just mans up and does it. 

Cam walks in with pretzels, peanut butter, and a bag of Cheetos to put away, and he looks really worried, tossing Claude sidelong glances out of the corner of his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, though, just pretends to be busy in the pantry as he watches Claude, and if that’s not a sign that Danny told them to leave him alone, Claude doesn’t know what is. 

Claude spits the water out into the sink, and it still comes out a little pink. He runs the tap to wash it down the drain, and since Cam’s still watching him while just unstacking and restacking cans of soup, Claude asks him, “Everything okay?” 

“Yeah,” Cam says casually, still focused on moving around the cans. “Everything okay with you?” 

“Yeah, bud,” Claude says, and it’s mostly the truth. “Just lost another tooth, but I’ll be fine.” 

“Oh,” Cam says, still feigning nonchalance. “Well, that’s okay, I guess.” 

“No, it’s not,” Claude says, almost laughing. “It sucks. Wanna see?” 

Cam finally looks at him then, his eyes slightly wide, and he says, “No. Dad says we should leave you alone, and that you’re in a bad mood.” 

“I _am_ in a bad mood,” Claude says. “But I still want to show you.” 

“Okay,” Cam says, and he walks over real lose, close enough that when Claude smiles, he can reach out and pull Claude’s upper lip higher with his thumb. “That’s really gross.” 

“Yeah?” Claude asks. “You think I’m gonna make it through the night, though?” 

“I dunno,” Cam says. “It might be touch-and-go.” 

Claude laughs a little at that—where did Cam learn the phrase touch-and-go, anyway?—and flicks Cam on the arm. “Get outta here,” he says. “Go to bed before your dad yells at us.” 

Cam flicks him back and then darts away without another word, leaving Claude to reorganize the soups and close the pantry door before he heads upstairs. 

“Left you some Advil on your end table,” Danny says as Claude walks down the upstairs hallway. He must’ve been listening out for Claude, because his bedroom door is wide open, and his light floods the dark hall. Danny’s halfway undressed, about to run through a shower, but Claude’s honestly not going to even bother with one. 

“Thanks,” Claude says. 

“You sure you don’t want me to tell the boys to take the bus tomorrow? They can manage one day.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure.” He’s got to get up early, anyways, to call the dentist. “Thanks though.” 

“No problem,” Danny says. 

Claude heads into his bedroom and shuts the door behind himself. His bedroom light is off, and he just leaves it that way, stripping off his shirt as he carefully crosses his room to flop down on his bed, on top of his covers. 

He thinks about it, and then after a minute, reaches out and blindly feels around for the bottle of Advil; he dry swallows two and then tosses the bottle back onto his end table, where it rolls around before finally falling over the edge and onto the carpet. He wiggles out of his jeans in an attempt to get comfortable, and his phone falls out of one of the pockets as he does, but Claude doesn’t worry about any of that, just shuts his eyes and lets everything else fall away. 

He’s hovering somewhere right along the edge of sleep when his phone buzzes underneath his thigh and wakes him up. 

His lock screen says it’s a text from BizNasty Left Bench, and the message just says, _Remember that time you took me as your date to your sister’s wedding?_

 _Yeah,_ Claude sends back. His fingers sleepily type _teaj,_ but autocorrect sorts him out. He remembers how, that night, Biz got drunk and hooked up with a bridesmaid in the bathroom, and then led the entire wedding party in the _Jump On It_ dance, before finally settling down at the kids’ table because they appreciated his jokes. _These little bastards think I’m hilarious,_ Biz had said. _It’s great for my ego; I should get one someday, maybe just a loaner or something._ Claude doesn’t know what that has to do with anything, but Biz usually has a destination in mind whenever he starts saying something, so he’s sure there’s some point or other being made. 

Another text comes in, this one with a picture of Biz standing in some store. _I learned today what it takes to be a father. Went with Keith Yandle to something called American Girl Doll. I don’t even want to tell you what those things cost._ And then immediately after that, another text comes in, _Safe to say I’ll keep wrapping it up._

 _Yeah, your ego’s fine anyway,_ Claude sends back. _No point in a kid._

 _Exactly,_ Biz sends back. _And your masculine beauty is fine, too, even without thirty-two teeth. At least you’re not Duncan Keith, eh?_

 _Small mercies,_ Claude agrees, and even though he knows what Biz is trying to do, and even though his _masculine beauty_ was never a source of worry, Claude rests a little easier. 

_Silver linings,_ Biz corrects. _Now go to bed, kid. Doctor’s orders._

Claude doesn’t bother texting him back. 

 

Claude’s not really in that great of a mood the next morning. He didn’t sleep well and his mouth is kind of killing him, and he looks like an idiot with his two front teeth bracketed by big gaps; it’s all manageable, though, and hardly the end of the world, and so when his alarm goes off, Claude doesn’t even bother with the snooze button and instead hops through a shower before the boys wake up and dominate the bathroom. 

When he’s finally dressed in corduroys and a random sweater that he finds on the floor in the back of his closet, he opens his bedroom door and pads barefoot down the hallway. Light is peaking out from underneath Danny’s door, but in the quiet of the house, Claude can hear the shower running, and so he takes the time to wake the boys. 

He knocks on Caelan and Carson’s first, and then gives them a second before opening the door and flipping on their light. He says, “Time to get ready, guys,” and waits around for a second until he sees signs of life from the both of them. 

“M’up!” Carson says. “M’up.” 

“ _No,_ ” Caelan groans. 

“Great,” Claude says. “See you downstairs for breakfast.” 

Next, he wakes Cam up by switching on the lamp on his bedside table, and when he does, Cam rubs his eyes and looks around his bedroom like he’s not quite sure where he is. 

“What day is it today?” he asks. 

“Monday,” Claude tells him. “Time to get ready for school.” 

“Okay,” Cam says, burrowing deeper into the covers, shutting his eyes. Claude just stands there and looks at him for a second, and then Cam sits up, saying, “Okay, I’m up.” 

“Alright, I’ll see you downstairs,” he says, and then he leaves the room, heading downstairs to the kitchen. 

Zoey and Zora wake up and go nuts the second Claude’s in the same room as they are, running to the back door and then to him and then back again, and so Claude lets them outside, sliding the door quickly shut behind them to keep out the cold. He puts their bowls down while they’re still outside, running around like crazy, and he’s about to start in on the boys’ lunches when Danny walks in. 

“Knock it off,” Danny says, grabbing the salami and mustard right out of Claude’s hands. “I got this.” 

He grabs the bread off the counter, too, and takes everything over to the large cutting board near the bar, leaving Claude standing there with his hands empty and still out in front of him. 

“I’m not out of commission, you know,” Claude points out. “It’s just a tooth.” 

“And this is just a sandwich,” Danny points out. “You can get their breakfast going.” 

“Alright,” Claude says, resigned, and then he grabs a few bowls and different types of cereal. He’s got everything balanced in his arms, and he’s about to go for the milk when Caelan walks into the kitchen and heads straight for the fridge; Cam’s right behind him, but instead of following, he just slides into his seat like usual. 

“Good morning, boys,” Danny says, and he looks a little in over his head with the lunches, but Claude just lets him do his thing, figuring that the sandwiches will come out alright, and if worst comes to worst, he can just repack all the snacks once Danny heads out for work. 

“G’morning,” Cam says, but Caelan doesn’t respond, and just ignores Danny. 

Instead, he grabs the milk himself and says, “What are you _doing,_ G? Go sit down.” 

“Uh,” Claude says, looking around the kitchen at everyone. “Why?” 

“Uh, I dunno,” Caelan says, putting the milk on the table. “Because you got hit in the face with a puck yesterday?” 

“It wasn’t a puck,” Claude points out. 

“ _Whatever,_ G,” Caelan says. “Just go sit down.” 

“You can sit next to me,” Cam offers, and he must push the leg of the chair underneath the table with his foot, because it slides out crookedly a few inches. 

Claude looks to Danny, and Danny’s mostly focused on the sandwiches, although he does flick his eyes up to Claude and smile. So he’s useless, then. 

“Okay,” Claude says slowly, and he sits down in the chair Cam freed for him, placing the bowls and cereal on the table as he does. 

“Good,” Caelan says, and then he places a yogurt down in front of him. “Eat this.” 

“Hey, Caelan, I appreciate it, but—”

“Just eat it,” Caelan says. “You take care of us all the time; it’s only fair.” 

Carson walks in before Claude can answer, studying a small bottle of _something_ that’s in his hand. He says, “I don’t know if you took any Advil this morning, but I brought down our Chewable Tylenol for you.” 

“The Grape Punch kind,” Caelan explains. “It’s not Bubblegum flavor, ‘cause we know you don’t like that.” 

“You guys,” Claude starts, feeling oddly touched by it all, “I don’t—”

“It says sixty to seventy-one pounds, take two and a half tablets, but if you’re seventy-two to ninety-five pounds, take three tablets,” Carson reads to him, and then he looks up. “How much do you weigh?” 

“Yeah, Claude,” Danny says, nearly laughing. “How much do you weigh?” 

“One seventy-two,” Claude tells him like a _fuck you._

“Oh,” Carson says. “This only goes up to ninety-five pounds, so. I guess just take like six tablets.” 

“What I don’t get,” Cam speaks up, “is how he’s gonna chew them if he’s missing a tooth.” 

“Oh... I didn’t think of that.” Carson looks down at the bottle and then out around at the kitchen, chewing on his lips and rocking up onto the balls of his feet. 

“Hey, now,” Claude says, because Carson actually looks pretty upset. “It’s only a front tooth; I can chew all the tablets I want. Gimme that.” He snatches the bottle from Carson and smiles wide, showing the gaps in his teeth and acting like they don’t matter, when really he hates them. 

“You don’t have to,” Carson says, and he lets himself be steered into a seat. 

“I want to,” Claude tells him. “Now shut up and eat your cereal, or we’re going to be late.” 

“Alright, jeez,” Carson says, and Claude glances towards the clock. 

It’s too much to ask to be ahead of schedule. 

 

It turns out to be not that bad. By a chance miracle, the boys really get moving after breakfast, and since there’s hardly any fighting in the bathroom, Claude manages to drop Caelan and Carson off so that they’re just rushing in with the first bell. That leaves plenty of time to get Cam to the elementary school, and then Claude heads over to the dentist’s. 

It turns out to be sort of hard to find, not that the office is in the middle of nowhere, but that it’s completely hidden by everything that’s around it, and Claude gets lost in a maze of office buildings. And then, when he finally finds the correct one, has a hard time finding the suite. 

“Sixteen,” Claude whispers to himself, double-checking the slip of paper in his hand. “Sixteen, sixteen, sixteen.” 

He walks the hallway of the entire first floor without finding suite sixteen, and so he walks it again. Still, the numbers go from one to fifteen, and then seventeen to twenty. Claude spins awkwardly in a circle between suites fifteen and seventeen, like maybe his suite is just going to appear, before finally giving up. 

He takes out his phone to call Jeff, because it’s almost his appointment time, and he doesn’t want to be late considering that the dentist was willing to squeeze him in on such short notice. It goes right over to voicemail, Richie’s voice mocking, _Wah, wah, Jeff is currently in Columbus for business and he’s unhappy!_ And then, more seriously, _Leave him a message and he’ll call you back… No, seriously, please leave him a message; I can’t deal with him calling me anymore._

Claude doesn’t bother leaving a message; he’s got stuff to do, and it’s not like Jeff doesn’t know that as it is. 

He finally finds the place on the second floor, a few minutes past his appointment time at nine-thirty, but when he tries to open the suite door, it’s locked. Claude steps back for a second, double-checks that he does actually— _finally _—have the right suite, and then he tries the door again.__

Still locked. 

He stands there another minute longer, his hands on his hips, while he tries to make up his mind on what to do. Obviously, the answer is to wait it out, hoping that the dentist shows, because having these idiotic gaps for longer than he has to is not something that he wants. 

“Claude?” someone asks, and when Claude turns, there’s an older man with white hair walking toward him, his hand held out to shake. 

“Dr. Clarke?” Claude asks, hesitantly, and the man just smiles. 

“Ah, call me Bobby,” the man says, and when he’s close enough, Claude shakes his hand. “Sorry I’m late; the dog didn’t seem to understand that he wasn’t invited with.” 

“No worries,” Claude says. “I actually only just got here; had a hard time finding the place.” 

Bobby laughs and takes a set of keys out of his pockets before he goes to unlock the door. He says conversationally, “We almost got stuck with suite thirty-six… You’d never find that one.” 

Claude doesn’t respond, too busy trying to process everything that’s happening, the way Bobby unlocks the door and then flips on the lights. 

“I don’t know if Jeff told you,” Bobby explains, “we’re usually closed on Mondays, but this’ll just be nice and quick; all we gotta do is take a look at the socket, make sure the tooth came out clean, and take some moldings of your mouth for the retainer.” 

“Oh,” Claude says, taken aback. “I could’ve come in tomorrow.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bobby says, waving a hand and busying around, setting up one of the back rooms and turning on the receptionist’s computer. He’s nice, the kind of guy Claude thinks should be a grandfather. “I used to play hockey, too; I can always make time for my own guys.” 

“Really?” Claude asks. “Here, or—?”

“No, no, out in Philly,” Bobby says. “Lived there for a while. We had a little league out there—nothing like out here—but back in the day, it got real rough. My friends and I lived in this old, run-down apartment on Broad Street, and we were so physical on the ice that they called us the Broad Street Bullies.” 

Bobby laughs at the memory, and Claude can so easily imagine that being him, reminiscing about the good old hockey days with someone younger, someone still playing. 

Claude wants to always be playing, even if he’s so old that he only takes one shift to everyone else’s five. 

“You should come out,” Claude says. “Come out. Play with us.” 

Bobby finishes setting up the tray by the patient’s chair, and he laughs a little bit more at Claude’s insistence. 

“No, no, I’m an old man now,” Bobby says. “I ache in places I didn’t know you could ache. But I suppose if I hadn’t learned to lay on a two-hander once in a while, I’d never have left Flin-Flon.” 

“Well,” Claude says, shrugging. “If you ever change your mind…”

Bobby holds up a tooth mold and says, “Cherry or mint?” He correctly assumes that Claude knows the drill, and doesn’t bother explaining things. 

“Mint, please,” Claude says quickly, because he chose cherry last time, and he’s learned his lesson there. 

“Mint it is,” Bobby says, smiling. “Now pull up a seat and let’s see what we’re dealing with.” 

 

Claude’s got a few hours to kill before he has to pick the boys up from school, and so he decides to spend it hanging out with Jake in his rented studio space. He just shows up after his appointment, because Jake’s always there and always telling people to stop by, but when Claude walks in, all he sees is Brayden standing next to half a log and holding a power carver, which is almost enough to make him turn around and leave. 

“Hey,” Brayden says, smiling and pulsing the carver twice, and that’s when Jake walks in from the back room, wearing plaid and looking every bit the lumberjack with his giant beard. 

“Jesus, how many times have I told you not to—oh, hey Claude,” Jake says. 

“Hey,” Claude says, and he hoists himself up to sit on a giant worktable that’s been pushed up against the wall. 

“Give me that,” Jake says, snatching the carver back from Brayden. He places it carefully down on a small table and then throws his entire body into rotating a huge cross-section of a tree trunk out of the way, so he can get to some smaller pieces. 

The workshop space is huge, all exposed floors and high ceilings, and even though there’s all this stuff everywhere, it always feels pretty empty and organized; it’s easy to overlook all the crazy woodcarvings that are propped up and stacked everywhere, and all the tools that Claude couldn’t even begin to understand how to use, because there’s so much more empty space than there is anything else. 

“So, wait,” Claude says, his legs swinging because they don’t touch the ground. “What’re you making now?” 

“It’s art, Claude, I shouldn’t have to explain it to you,” Jake says, and Brayden lets out a sarcastic laugh that would usually result in him getting dead-armed. “Nah, it’s just a set of end tables, but I’m getting paid enough that I won’t have to take another boring job for a few months.” 

“Better than Bobby Gopefert,” Brayden says. “Have you seen what he’s been posting on twitter?” 

“No,” Claude says. “Why? What’s he say?” 

“I guess he’s babysitting for a friend or something,” Brayden says, fiddling around on his phone, “because that’s all he’s talking about.” 

“No way the kid doesn’t walk away emotionally scarred,” Jake says. 

“Tell me about it,” Brayden agrees. “Listen to this: _Babysitting. For a couple hours, my teammate’s son will be raised by my code. Issue One, Mickey Mouse shows have been replaced by Looney Toons._ ” Brayden pauses, probably scrolling on his phone. “And then he tweets, _Elmer Fudd taught me humility, Daffy taught me how to laugh, Bugs taught me how to live, and Pepe le Pew taught me how to love, although I think I turned out more like Wile E. Coyote._ ”

“Thank god I missed Danny’s boys at that age,” Claude says. “I’m barely surviving the anime phase as it is.” 

“I thought Cam liked Indiana Jones and Star Wars, stuff like that,” Jake says. 

“Yeah, no, I meant Carson.” 

“Oh. Rough,” Jake agrees. 

Brayden laughs and says, “Goepfert just tweeted again. _Random playpen inspection sweeps has turned up_ —has turned up? _Have_ turned up— _two shivs, a spoon, and the looks of an early started tunnel beneath his padded floor. Hashtag lockdown._ ”

“Should be we calling child services?” Jake asks, and Brayden just shrugs. 

“Probably,” he says. “Hey, you got anything to eat around here?” 

“There’s a mini-fridge in the back,” Jake says. He’s not really doing anything, just measuring out slabs of wood and marking them with pencil, but he looks really focused on it. “I think I have some of my mom’s _řízek,_ or there’s also, uh—shit, what do I have? Oh! Peanut butter and jelly and like, bread and stuff.” 

“Awesome,” Brayden says. “I’m gonna go make a sandwich. You want one? G?” 

“I’m good,” Jake says. 

“Sure,” Claude says. He’s not sure when else he’ll eat lunch. “Thanks.” 

Jake walks over to pick up a large metal ruler from the table that Claude’s sitting on, and he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to where Brayden is, “This is what he’s going to be like when you move in together. It’s not too late to change your mind; save yourself.” 

Claude laughs. 

“It’s too late for me,” he says. “Go on without me.” 

“Yeah, you motherfucker,” Brayden yells, but Claude’s not entirely sure who the motherfucker is in this situation. “That’s basically what I’m fucking doing, since you won’t tell the baby Brieres.” 

“I’m _trying,_ ” Claude defends himself. “But there’s a lot of shit going on. Like—”

“Dragon Ball Z marathons,” Jake agrees. 

“—Carson literally got sent home from school for fighting. _Carson,_ ” Claude says, “decked some kid in the mouth. And then I was going to tell them over the weekend, but Caelan had some weird freak-out and basically told me to fuck off, and honestly? This shit is so stressful, because their mom didn’t leave in the best of ways, and I terrified of doing something that’ll leave them scarred for the rest of their life.” 

There’s a long pause after Claude finishes explaining himself. Brayden walks over with two sandwiches held loosely in a paper towel, and then the three of them just sort of look at each other, making awkward faces that only aren’t uncomfortable because he’s known them forever. 

“Uh,” Jake says. 

“You want me to call Bobby for you?” Brayden asks. “Kids are more his area…”

“Shut up,” Claude says, rolling his eyes, but his reaction does exactly what Brayden meant for it to do, and it breaks the tension, all three of them breaking out into wide smiles. He reaches out for his sandwich. “Gimme that.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Brayden says, and he hoists himself up on the worktable next to Claude. And later, when Jake’s got his circular saw going, Brayden bumps shoulders with him and says, “Take your time. I mean, I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Yeah?” Claude asks. “You’re not gonna ditch me to move in with Coots?” 

“What, that toothless asshole?” Brayden asks, grinning. “No way; he can barely even do his own laundry.” 

“He can do his own laundry,” Claude says. 

“No, I’m not kidding you,” Brayden insists. “I literally just showed him how like three months ago. When he was still at school, he’d just wear everything he had before taking all home to his mom every other month.” 

Claude laughs and says, “You’re so full of shit.” 

“I’m not.” 

“He’s _twenty,_ ” Claude insists. 

“I _know,_ ” Brayden says. “I worry.” 

And it’s really not much of anything, just the two of them shooting the shit while Jake curses over cutting his wood wrong, but it still eases something in Claude that he didn’t realize was even tense to begin with. 

It’s nice. 

 

Danny gets home earlier than usual that night, and after dinner and homework, the five of them play Wii Sports until Cam’s nice and sweaty and the boys are about to collapse. 

“I’m the sweaty brother,” Cam explains as the boys gear up to go to bed. “Doesn’t matter what we do, I still always get the sweatiest.” 

“Your aunt doesn’t sweat at all,” Danny tells them. “So I’m definitely the sweaty brother. Maybe it runs in the family.” 

It’s just so ridiculous that Claude lets out a loud laugh, which has Cam pinching his side, and Danny smiling like he wants to be laughing, too. 

“Alright, already,” Claude says. “I’m sick of your sweating! Get to bed!” 

Cam drags his feet every inch of the way, and then Claude heads back downstairs, flopping down into one corner of the couch, Zora at his feet and Zoey nowhere to be found. Danny waits to make sure that Cam’s lights are out, and that Caelan and Carson know they only get another hour if they’re reading, and then he joins Claude, bringing with him two longnecks held between the fingers of one hand. 

“Thanks,” Claude says, snagging one, and the top’s already off, so he takes a sip as Danny sits beside him at the other end of the couch. Claude waits a second and then asks, “The sweaty brother, huh?” 

Danny does laugh this time, quietly, but like he’d be louder about it if it weren’t for the boys, and then he nods and says seriously, “It’s a Briere family curse; there’s always one.” 

“Maybe you should have Biz look into that,” Claude suggests. 

“Oh, god, no,” Danny says. “I trust Biz with my stitches, but I know him too well to trust him with my kids.” 

Claude tilts his head in acceptance and agrees, “Probably for the best,” and then the two of them fall silent for a few minutes, watching the news. 

At a commercial break, Danny asks, “What’d the dentist say about your teeth?” 

“Not must, just the usual,” Claude says. “He’s got a lab or something, though, so he says I should have my new retainer by the weekend.” 

“Okay, so at least there’s that.” 

“Yeah,” Claude agrees, “but meanwhile, I look like a fucking idiot with both of these gaps.” 

“You don’t look like a fucking idiot,” Danny says. 

“Danny.” 

“Alright, a little bit of an idiot,” Danny concedes, shrugging helplessly, and he takes a pull of his beer as Claude huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes. “But it’s not that bad! I’m pretty sure at least the dogs will always love you.” 

“Real reassuring,” Claude deadpans, and Danny smiles because he knows what he’s doing. “It’s a wonder you haven’t lost any of your teeth; you’ve been playing longer than I have.” 

“Not by much,” Danny points out. “But you like the physical game a lot more than me. You know, fighting and stuff like that. You outnumber me like eight fights to one.” 

“I guess,” Claude says, and then he explains himself even though he doesn’t need to by saying, “I dunno, I like a good fight. Kinda gets me going a little bit, even though I’m usually pissed afterwards.” 

“Yeah, I know,” Danny says, dryly. 

They kind of just sit around in silence after that, watching the news and then whatever Seinfeld rerun comes on afterwards, idly talking about how Caelan hasn’t even started his science fair project yet, how Jason and MayRay have decided to open a specialty fried egg sandwich place in Vancouver, and that time Tuukka ate nothing but chicken wings for three days straight. 

Eventually, Danny stands up and grabs both his and Claude’s empty bottles, and says, “Alright, I’m heading up.” 

“Okay,” Claude says. “G’night.” 

“Yeah,” Danny says. He gives a two-fingered wave around the necks of the bottles and then heads into the kitchen. Claude can hear him drop the bottles in with the rest of the recycling that they have to take out, and then he goes upstairs, Zoey’s nails clicking on the tile as she follows him to the staircase. She eventually heads into the living room and slumps down onto the floor next to Zora, and the two of them snore so loudly that he almost can’t hear the tv, the volume low so the sound doesn’t travel upstairs. 

 

By the time Claude shuts off the tv and shuffles upstairs, the whole house is quiet and still, and it’s strange, but he’s going to miss these moments just as much as he’ll miss anything else that comes with living in the Briere house. He flicks off the hallway light when he gets to his bedroom, then closes his door, takes off his shirt, and turns off his lamp; it’s all part of a well-worn routine, right down to how he crosses his room and nearly trips over an old pair of jeans before flopping down on his bed. 

Maybe Danny’s onto something with what he’s always saying. Maybe he should clean up. 

Claude’s only got his eyes shut for a few minutes when he hears it: the kind of tapping on his door that the boys do when they want to knock but don’t want to risk waking Claude up if he’s asleep. The door opens a second later, and Claude can just barely make out Caelan’s shape in the darkness. 

“G?” Caelan whispers, not moving from the doorway. 

“Yeah, bud?” Claude whispers back. 

“Did I wake you?” 

And it's not really normal for the boys to tap on Claude’s door in the middle of the night—in the middle of an afternoon nap, sure, and the few times they _did_ wake him up past midnight, it was because it was Claude’s birthday, or because they snuck down for ice cream and broke something, and didn’t want to tell Danny—and so Claude says, “Nah, I was still up. Come on in.” 

“You sure?” Caelan asks. “I can just talk to you in the morning.” 

“Stop being weird and get in here,” Claude says to him, smiling, and he can tell by the way Caelan lets out a huff of breath that he’s smiling too, even though Claude can’t see it. He can hear the door close, though, and can hear Caelan expertly make his way past all the stuff on Claude’s floor, and then a second later, he can feel the foot of his bed dip. Claude’s eyes are just used to the dark enough that he can see Caelan, then, his face and his pajamas and his crossed legs. 

Neither of them says anything for a long minute, but then Claude sits up and Caelan says like he’s apologizing, “You don’t look like an idiot without your other tooth; it actually looks really cool, like a battle scar or something.” 

“Thanks,” Claude says, still smiling a little, even though he knows that’s not what Caelan came to say. Claude plays along anyways, knowing that Caelan will talk when he’s good and ready, and so he says, “My dentist was from a town called Flin Flon.” 

“No way,” Caelan exclaims in disbelief, forgetting to be quiet for a second. “That’s not even a real place.” 

“It is,” Claude insists, nodding. “I googled it.” 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Caelan says. “That’s so dumb.” 

“I dunno, I like it,” Claude says, shrugging, but it doesn’t get the reaction he was looking for, no _Jeez, and you’re not even from there,_ no _Yeah, but you’re dumb too, G._

Instead, Caelan says in the most forced nonchalant voice Claude has ever heard, “You’ve dated a lot of girls, right?” 

And Claude is not even a little bit prepared to handle this; he was _so sure_ Caelan would go to Danny with this that he didn’t even come up with a fail-safe. He’s so blindsided by this that he sort of just answers honestly and hopes for the best. 

“No,” he says. “Just two; one in high school, and then Ryanne.” 

“I didn’t really like her,” Caelan says. 

“Yeah, I know,” Claude deadpans, because the three of them made that readily apparent. 

“Sorry,” Caelan says, and Claude shrugs. 

“Nothing to be sorry about.” 

There’s another silence after that, and Claude sort of thinks about filling it, but then he re-thinks that in favor of letting Caelan set the pace of the conversation. He almost expects the silence to go on forever, the way Caelan’s just sitting there, picking at Claude’s comforter, but then it doesn’t. 

“You don’t think there’s anything that’ll make Dad change his mind about letting us play hockey when we’re older, do you?” 

It’s not at all what Claude was expecting, and he wants to say, _No way,_ because Danny’s been talking about that with Claude all the time recently, what age is old enough and is it too physical for kids, and he’s even planning on making the three of them a mini-pond over their winter break, just so they can all play a little and get the feel for it. Danny’s a fucking stellar dad, but Claude doesn’t say any of that, because it’s not his place. Instead, he says, “I mean, I can’t promise anything, but I don’t think so.” 

“Yeah, I don’t think so, either,” Caelan says, and Claude just—

“Hey, Cae?” he asks. “Everything okay?” 

Caelan jumps at that, and says, “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone? Not even Dad or Reemer?” 

“Of course,” Claude says, and he wishes the lights were on, wishes he could see Caelan’s face right now. Claude feels nervous, and it’s so stupid because he’s pretty sure that he knows what’s coming, and it’s a huge deal for Caelan. It doesn’t change anything, but Claude’s worried about how he’ll react when it’s actually out in the open, what he’ll say and how Caelan will interpret it. 

“I kind of…” Caelan says, and then he swallows and starts again. “I kind of think I like Coots. Like, _like_ like.” 

And Claude—well, he already knew that much, didn’t he? So he doesn’t really know if he’s supposed to act surprised or something, especially considering that he’s not. He figures maybe he should just act like he would with anything else, or if Caelan was talking about liking the high school cheerleader next door. 

“Yeah, he’s nice,” Claude says lightly, hoping that acting like it doesn’t matter—because it _doesn’t_ —is what Caelan’s looking for. “Way too old for you, but nice.” 

“ _G,_ ” Caelan says, and Claude can hear it in his voice that he’s upset. “I’m being _serious._ ”

“Me too,” Claude rushes to say, although truthfully, he was sort of joking around because he didn’t know what else to do. “I’m glad you told me, but I don’t—I don’t know what else you want me to say. It doesn’t matter that he’s a boy.” 

Caelan’s hands fly up into the air out of frustration, and he says, “Of _course_ it matters; haven’t you been listening to me?” 

“Yeah,” Claude says. “I mean, it matters, but it doesn’t _matter,_ not to me.” 

Caelan seems to understand what Claude means by that, and he deflates a little bit, says, “You still can’t tell anyone.” 

“I won’t,” Claude promises. 

“Good,” Caelan says, and then so quietly that Claude almost doesn’t hear it, he adds, “Because I still want to play hockey.” 

And that—it fucking breaks Claude’s heart. He wants to ask who told Caelan that he couldn’t, or that being gay at all makes a fucking difference when it comes to what he can and can’t do. He wants to know who fucking _dared_ —

“Well,” Claude says calmly, although Caelan probably knows him well enough to tell that he’s not actually feeling calm at all, “whoever made you think you couldn’t be tough as nails and still like Coots is full of shit. You can be gay and—”

“ _Claude,_ ” Caelan groans. 

“You can _like boys_ and still destroy everyone out on the ice.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Caelan challenges him, but he’s such an open book, the way he wants Claude to be right. “Can you even name anyone who does both?” 

And Claude thinks, well, there’s no fucking way he’s telling Caelan about Coots, not when he’s into Coots and Coots is twenty and dating Brayden. His mind is still moving a million miles an hour, trying to figure out what to say, when his mouth supplies, “Crosby.” 

“Oh, _great,_ ” Caelan says. “The _Crosbaby._ Perfect, G, really—”

“Brayden’s gay,” Claude says, because really, what the fuck was he thinking, _Crosby._ “And, uh. Malkin. You met Malkin on Friday, right?” 

“Geno?” Caelan asks. “But he’s, like, _really good._ ” 

Claude nods, and says, “He’s dating Crosby. Sort of. I don’t really know.” 

Caelan just scoffs before saying, “Now I know you’re lying.” 

“No, it’s true,” Claude says, a hand over his heart. “May the puck always shoot wide if it’s not.” 

Caelan takes a second to mull that over, and Claude wonders if he went too far. Maybe it wasn’t too smart, thinking that Crosby and Malkin would be good examples, not when Caelan knows that Claude can’t stand either of them. Maybe he _should’ve_ said Coots, or maybe he shouldn’t have said anyone at all, because maybe that wasn’t even remotely what Caelan wanted or needed to hear. Maybe—

“That’s really gross,” Caelan says. “But Geno’s not from here, right? Maybe he’ll change his mind when he learns more.” 

"About…liking boys?” Claude asks. 

“No,” Caelan says slowly, like Claude’s an idiot. “About liking _Crosby._ ” 

“Yeah,” Claude says, suddenly barely able to contain his smile, because he doubts Malkin will learn, and because Caelan’s back to being Caelan again. “Maybe.” 

“Anyway, I’m going to bed,” Caelan says, marking the end of the conversation by slipping off the mattress and onto the floor. “Make me pancakes tomorrow.” 

“Make _me_ pancakes tomorrow,” Claude says, and Caelan does his quiet laugh again, shoves Claude’s knee. 

“No,” he says, and tip-toes across Claude’s room. When he gets to the door, he turns around and says, “I’m really glad you’re—” and then stops. 

Claude thinks of a million things that could fill that blank: _okay with it,_ and, _keeping my secret,_ and, _not mad at me for saying you didn’t care._

And then Caelan says, “Never mind. But thanks,” and leaves Claude sitting there, somehow still nervous and a little relieved, thanking whoever’s listening that it went as well as it did. 

 

The next morning, life goes on like normal, like Caelan never said anything, and Claude realizes that maybe that’s the point. Caelan’s the same as he’s always been, despite now liking Coots, same as Claude’s the same as _he’s_ always been, despite feeling the need to move out. And if Claude can see that—that nothing has changed—maybe Caelan will see it, too, when Claude finally tells him the truth about getting his own place. 

“Are you even listening?” Cam asks, startling Claude out of his thoughts. They’re all at the breakfast table except for Carson, and Cam’s been talking nonstop since he got downstairs. 

“Yeah, of course,” Claude fibs. “Miguel was telling you about a movie…?”

“Just checking,” Cam says, and then he eats some cereal and keeps talking around the mouthful. “I just think it sounds like it could be kind of cool, if you want to watch it.” 

“What sounds cool?” Carson asks, finally shuffling downstairs to eat breakfast with the rest of them. Claude pours the milk into his cereal as if to signify, _Let’s get a move on,_ and Danny rolls his eyes. 

“This movie Miggy watched on Netflix,” Cam says again. “It’s about this boy who like—he has this cupboard from his brother or something, and when he locks his toy Indian inside, the Indian comes to life, and—”

“Native American,” Carson corrects. “You’re being racist.” 

“I’m not being _racist,_ ” Cam says. “It’s _called Indian in the Cupboard._ ”

“He means un-PC,” Caelan interjects, and Claude looks over to Danny, who looks like he’s not ready for a political debate before six-thirty. 

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” Carson rushes to agree. “Un-PC.” 

“I don’t even know what that _means,_ ” Cam says, his face pink with frustration, and that’s when Danny wisely steps in. 

“Alright, drop it,” he says, taking his tea bag out of his mug. Claude starts the mental countdown until Danny reaches for a piece of chocolate, and tries not to laugh at how Danny’s got his tie flipped over his shoulder. “It’s to early to argue; eat your cereal.” 

“He started it,” Carson mutters, referring to Cam, and Claude wants to laugh. 

“Not a chance,” he says. 

“You _do_ know I was here for this whole thing, right?” Danny points out, and then when Cam opens his mouth to argue, Danny cuts him off with, “No.” 

Caelan laughs at them, and while they’re all distracted, Claude nudges Cam’s elbow and tells him quietly, “We can watch it this weekend.” 

Cam smiles like he’s been told a great secret, and he says, “If I do my homework tomorrow right away, we can watch it before dinner.” 

“Reemer and I are going to see Gretzky talk at the town hall today, and he might come back to hang afterwards.” 

“Oh,” Cam says. “Well, that’s okay. I like Reemer.” 

“That’s only because you don’t know him that well,” Claude says, and then he gets up to refill his cup of coffee. 

“No,” Cam calls after him, as if Claude wasn’t just joking around. “I liked him that time we played poker against him.” 

“ _That’s_ only because you won all of his candy,” Claude counters. 

“Wait,” Caelan interrupts, joining the conversation. “Poker with _who_?” 

“Reemer,” Cam says. 

“James van _Rebuy,_ ” Carson corrects. “He was so bad, we kept having to let him take more candy to bet with, just so he could keep playing.” 

Caelan waves his spoon and asks, “Where was I when all this happened?” 

“You were spending the night at Sam’s,” Danny says, unwrapping a square of dark chocolate from the bowl in the center of the table. 

“Oh,” Caelan says. “Well, we should play again tonight, then.” 

“No,” Danny says, like, _Definitely not._ “Everybody ate so much candy that night that—”

“ _You’re_ eating candy _right now,_ ” Caelan points out. 

“Yeah, _Dad,_ ” Carson says. 

“ _Yeah,_ Dad,” Cam agrees. 

Danny looks at them and then looks to Claude, and then he looks back again. He waves a hand once, like a stilted hello, or like, _Get out of here with that bull,_ depending on context. 

“No,” Danny finally says. “Talk to me when you’re thirty-five.” 

“ _Dad,_ ” Caelan stresses. 

“You heard the man,” Claude tells him. Then he looks at the clock and says, “If you’re not all outside in twenty minutes, all three of you are sitting in the back seat, and I’m blasting Luke Bryan with the windows down.” 

The boys are gone so fast that the empty bowls rattle on the tabletop. Danny looks at him for a second before saying dryly, “Well, that’s one way to do it.” 

“ _Please,_ ” Claude tells him, like he’s about to make some great point, but he doesn’t actually have anything else to say. Danny knows it, too, and although he doesn’t comment on it, a small smile makes its way across his face as they skim the morning paper, Danny reading the front page, and Claude reading the sports. 

 

Claude drops the kids off at school, giving Cam lunch money because he forgot his lunch on the counter again, and then he heads back home to laze around for a while and eat Cam’s sandwich. Danny’s got a meeting in the morning, and he says that his plan is to work from home afterwards, but Claude heads out to meet up with Reemer before he gets back, and so he doesn’t know how that actually panned out. 

“Man, this is fucking nuts,” Reemer says when they’re at the town hall, looking around at all the party signs everywhere, posters with Gretzky’s face that proclaim, 

Minister of State for Sport Wayne Gretzky Discusses the Importance of Youth Athletics. “Like, I knew he was a big deal and all, but I only ever remember him as the best hockey player I’ve ever seen, even though he’s like twice my age. If not that, he’s the guy who once left Bobby Orr’s New Year’s party naked and covered in bath bubbles.” 

“You’re really into those pictures, eh?” Claude asks. 

“No,” Reemer says, his eyebrows high on his forehead like he can’t believe Claude would even suggest that. “I’m seriously scarred for life.” 

Claude laughs and shuffles forward with the rest of the people around them, to the first open seats they can find, way in the back. It’s crowded, a couple hundred people, but there’s a projector set up, which he can see that just fine, and it’s not like he doesn’t already know what Gretzky looks like. 

_Minister of State for Sport._ Shit. Claude didn’t know Gretzky all that well, only played with him at the old pond a couple of times, but it’s still crazy that one of their own could go on to hold public office, or even want to. 

“Can you imagine ever running for office?” Claude asks, not really sure what he means by it other than _no hockey._

“No way, man,” Reemer says. “I don’t photograph well.” And then, more seriously, “I don’t think Gretzky could’ve ever really imagined it, either, until he went and actually did it.” 

Claude figures that’s probably true, and says, “The way some of the older guys always talked about him, I always thought he was just gonna keep on playing until the day he died in the middle of a shift.” 

Reemer nods like he understands and says, “That’s going to be us. I don’t ever want to stop playing.” 

“I’ll have you buried under pond ice,” Claude offers. 

“That’d be so fucking gross,” Reemer says. “Can you imagine skating on it, if the ice isn’t thick enough? Like that one episode of The X-Files that starts off with the kid digging his feet into the dirt as he’s playing baseball?” 

“I never watched The X-Files,” Claude says with a shrug. 

“I forgot,” Reemer groans. “You live in this weird cocoon of like, old action movie franchise and Gundam Wing.” 

“It’s a hazard of the job,” Claude says, and then squinting across the hall, he asks, “Is that Neon Dion?” 

“Where?” 

“By the projector screen,” Claude says, pointing, and then Reemer spends the next ten minutes hollering to Phaneuf across the hall, _What are you doing here?_ and, _Is Kessel with you? He owes me fifty bucks!_

Security ends up having to politely ask them to be quiet, and once they leave, Claude tells Reemer, “Should’ve just come without you,” and shakes his head like, _It’s a shame._

“You wouldn’t have even _known_ about this if it wasn’t for me,” Reemer points out, and Claude can’t argue that, couldn’t even if he wanted to, because then people are coming on stage, talking and introducing Gretzky, as if anyone would’ve actually shown up to this thing without knowing who he was. 

The speech itself is alright. Or, as Reemer leans over and whispers to him a few minutes in, “Boring as shit; I thought a hockey dude would’ve made hockey happen?” 

Claude can’t help but agree, at least a little. On one hand, he understands what Gretzky’s working against, the people and the institutions that are actively anti-hockey, because it _is_ so violent, and it _is_ dangerous if someone’s not wearing the right gear or doesn’t know what they’re doing. But, on the other hand, so is American football, and Canadian football, and wrestling, and equestrianism, and swimming; hockey is no different from any other sport out there, except for how it’s the one sport Claude loves. He knows Gretzky loves it, too, and that’s why it’s so frustrating to sit and listen to him go on and on about the merits of having kids play soccer and basketball and baseball, of how it keeps them healthy and active, and how it helps develop a sense of camaraderie, of team unity; hockey does all of those things, too, and just as well. 

By the time Gretzky’s taking questions from the audience, Claude and Reemer are so bored and so fed up that they’re itching to get up and just leave. 

“Maybe we should just make a run for it,” Reemer whispers, looking back over his shoulder towards the nearest exit. “I’m getting hungry.” 

“We could be eating lunch right now, if you didn’t drag me here,” Claude whispers back. 

“ _Me?_ ” Reemers asks. “This was all your idea; I didn’t even live here until eight days ago.” 

Claude rolls his eyes, smiling, because none of what they’re saying is at all true or interesting or relevant; mostly, they’re just so bored that they’re resorting to half-hearted chirping just to stay awake. 

He’s about to set Reemer straight about whose idea it really was when he hears it: 

“My name’s Cameron, and my question’s about hockey.” 

For a second, Claude doesn’t think anything of it, because Cam’s at school, and multiple Camerons can be interested in hockey, same as he knows multiple Jordans that are, or multiple Mikes. But then it sets in that he knows that voice, that it’s not just _a_ Cameron, it’s _his_ Cameron, and Claude’s attention snaps right to the projector. 

“Shit,” Reemer says, dragging it out under his breath. “I take it you didn’t know he was coming?” 

“No,” Claude says back. “I even dropped him off at school this morning.” 

“Oh,” Reemer says, and out by the mic, Cameron’s given the go-ahead to continue. 

“I was just wondering,” Cam says, “if you played hockey, and loved hockey, why don’t you do anything about making it okay for everyone else to play?” 

Gretzky nods like that was a good question, and then he asks, as if Cam’s the only one in the room, “Do you play hockey, Cameron?” 

“No,” Cam says like it’s obvious. “I come from a hockey family, and sometimes we play in the street, but as you _probably_ know, kids aren’t allowed to play it on the ice.” 

“Oh my god,” Reemer says, laughter in his voice. 

Claude groans and, torn between sitting at the edge of his seat and slouching back as low as he can go, he settles for covering his eyes with his hand and watching through the gaps between his fingers. 

“Right,” Gretzky says, nodding. “I do know that. And as a former hockey player, of course I wish everyone could play, because I’ve seen firsthand what hockey does for someone’s health, for someone’s character, and for—”

“If you love it so much, then why did you stop playing?” Cam interrupts. “If you love something, you don’t just leave it behind.” 

Next to Claude, Reemer whispers, “Wow.” 

“I’m going to kill him,” Claude whispers back, and up on the stage, Gretzky waves a hand at someone in the crowd like, _It’s okay, leave the kid be._

“I left because I got old,” Gretzky says. “And because I think I can do some good in the position that I’m in. Changing the mindset of a country is never easy, and so while of course I’m trying, it will take more than just me to get the job done; it’ll take people like your parents, and people like you, and it will take a long time.” He pauses, like he’s about to leave it there, but then he adds, “And, if it’s possible, I love hockey even more now than I did when I was still playing it.” 

“Oh,” Cam says, breathless, like Gretzky really did a number on him, and Claude watches him nod and smile. He steps away from the mic stand, only to then immediately step right back up. “Oh! And, um. Does anyone have two dollars so I can take the bus home?” 

Gretzky laughs, luckily, although Claude doesn’t see if Cam gets his money because he’s too busy hiding his face in the crook of his elbow. 

 

The second the event is over, Claude cuts through the crowd and heads towards Cameron, going against the sea of people to get there. Reemer follows him without saying anything, and by the time they finally get to Cam, he’s still just sitting in his seat, idly watching the crowd move past him. 

Claude says, “You are in so much trouble, it’s unbelievable.”

Cam turns the second he hears Claude’s voice, and he doesn’t look surprised to see him at all; he knew Claude and Reemer would be there, and Claude’s at a loss as to why the hell Cam would even want to go in the first place, let alone do something to end of on the projector and get himself caught.

“Oh. Hey, Claude,” Cam says easily. “Hey, van Rebuy.”

“Hey,” Reemer says, half confused and half amused.

“I’m not kidding,” Claude says, because he gets that he can be lax with them, and that they know he usually takes things easy. “Your dad is going to flip.”

“No, he won’t,” Cam says confidently. “You won’t even tell him; you didn’t tell him when Carson got in that fight, or when Caelan told you to eff off.”

“He didn’t tell me to—” Claude starts, and then he changes tracks. “And watch your language.”

“I said _eff,_ ” Cam points out, and Claude just has _no clue_ where any of this is coming from, because he thought he was good with Cameron— _especially_ with Cameron—until Cameron was at least about fourteen. 

“Wow,” Reemer says, looking every bit in over his head. “Wow. I’m just gonna go? But I’ll see you at the pond tomorrow, G.”

“You’re not coming over?” Cam asks.

“Uh, no,” Reemer says, laughing a little like he can’t believe Cam would ask that. Claude can’t really believe it, either. “I think you’re a little bit, uh. On the chopping block.”

“See you, Reems,” Claude says, and Reemer gives them a wave before heading out. Claude doesn’t watch him go, and instead just studies Cam’s face for a minute, looking for something. He doesn’t find it—doesn’t even know what _it_ is—and in the end, just shakes his head. He says, “Let’s go.” 

“Okay,” Cam says, and then Claude steers him out of the building and through the parking lot with a hand on the back of his neck.

Cam talks the entire way, not seeming to understand how much trouble he’s in, saying things like, _Imagine having to give a speech in front of all those people,_ and, _Video games sometimes need teamwork,_ and, _Was Gretzky really as good as everyone says he was?_ He doesn’t slow down at all when Claude doesn’t answer, and so finally, as they’re climbing into the car, Claude tells him, “Yeah, I’m really not in the mood to talk to you right now, bud.”

The silence that follows is a stunned one, and Claude can see in the rearview as he’s backing out that Cam _looks_ stunned, too.

“Are you actually mad at me?” Cam asks finally, his voice small and his eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Claude answers honestly. “A little bit.”

Cam doesn’t respond, but his entire face crumples, and Claude honestly doesn’t know what was going through Cam’s head when he came up with this idea, doesn’t have the slightest clue. A part of him wants to take Cam right home and lock him away in his room until he learns his lesson, until he realizes that school is important, and that he’s just a kid, and so he can’t be running around by himself, without anybody knowing where he is. It’s a ridiculous idea, one borne out of love and over-protectiveness, and one that he could never actually follow through on, no matter how much he may want to. 

When Claude looks at the clock on the dash, he realizes that the middle school will be letting out soon, and so he doesn’t bother going home, and instead just takes Cam with him to pick up the others. By the time he pulls into the school parking lot and double-parks at the curb, he can Cam are still both silent. Cam’s looking out the window, his mouth all scrunched up, but he’s not pouting like Carson was, not throwing a fit like Caelan would be; they’re both growing up, getting moody and learning not to idolize Claude so much, and Claude gets that Cam’s growing up, too, and that it’s inevitable, but he still wants to put that off for as long as he can.

Claude lets out a deep breath and, with his forehead to the steering wheel, says, “If something happened to you…”

“But nothing happened to me,” Cam says, not arguing, just stating the facts because he’s young and he doesn’t realize how quickly things could’ve taken a turn for the worse.

“I know,” Claude tells him. “But _if._ ”

Cam doesn’t say anything, and when Claude glances back, he just looks down at his hands and then out the window, and Claude doesn’t say anything either, because he doesn’t know what _to_ say. Something has to give, though, and Claude doesn’t know what, but the boys can’t keep acting out like this. It just doesn’t make any sense to him, all three of them going from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye.

__

They’re still just sitting there in silence by the time Caelan and Carson fling open the trunk, unceremoniously tossing their bags in the back as they talk loudly about something that happened to their friend in gym class.

“Why is Cam here?” Caelan asks, climbing into the front seat. “Did he get out early?”

“That’s not fair,” Carson says, and Claude waits until they buckle up before taking the car out of park.

“Cameron,” Claude explains slowly, “is in huge trouble because he skipped school.”

“Are you gonna tell Dad?” Carson asks.

“Can we be there?” Caelan adds.

“ _Shut up,_ ” Cam says, his face pinched and his cheeks red. “Just because you guys were too dumb to—”

“ _You_ shut up,” Caelan interrupts, and he twists in his seat so that he can reach back and punch Cam in the leg.

“All of you shut up,” Claude finally snaps. “You’re all in so much trouble, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“What did _I_ do?” Carson asks.

“You punched Ryan Mullis in the face,” Caelan says.

“Yeah, like eight years ago!”

“I’m serious,” Claude tells them. “No one better say a single word this entire drive home, or I’m going to lose it.”

And that’s a lie, he probably wouldn’t lose it, and they probably know that, too, but the three of them still fall silent as Claude drives, hands at ten and two as he figures out where the hell to go from there.

 

Claude marches the three of them through the door, and the second they see Danny in the living room, they try to scatter.

“Not a chance,” Claude says, and then he points to the couch, saying, “Park it.”

Danny looks up from his laptop, a little confused at first because he’s still all wrapped up in work, but then he smiles.

“Hey,” Danny says. “How was school?”

“Fine,” Cam says, dropping down onto the couch, and Claude laughs a little in disbelief.

“Don’t even try it,” he says, and then he looks at Caelan and Carson, motions towards the couch.

“ _Claude,_ ” Caelan says, but Claude just makes the motion again, this time a little more forcefully. They drag their feet the entire way, but they do listen.

“Okay,” Claude says when they’re all seated, the three boys on the couch and Danny still in the armchair, looking like he’s expecting Claude to break the news about moving out. That’s not at all what he’s getting, but there’s not much to be done about it. Claude paces the length of the living room in front of them, and they all just sit there and watch him. “You guys gotta let me in on what’s going on, because I’m trying my best, but I’m running out of ideas, here.” 

Nobody answers except for Danny, who says, “Going on with what?” and so Claude just ignores him for now, because he knows it’s probably going to get real ugly once Danny realizes that Claude’s kind of been keeping secrets from him. 

Finally, Carson looks down at his own knees and says, “Nothing’s going on.” 

“Yeah,” Cam agrees. “Nothing’s going on, Claude.” 

“Oh, really?” Claude asks. “So you just skipped school today for no reason?” 

“You _skipped school_?” Danny asks, surprised. 

“And you,” Claude turns to Carson. “Did I imagine the fight you got into at school? Or Caelan cursing me out? I mean, come on, guys, something’s going—”

“ _What?_ ” Danny says, floored. 

“Well, luckily you won’t have to deal with us for much longer,” Caelan interrupts, his arms folded across his chest, and he looks angrier than Claude thinks he’s ever seen him. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“Carson heard you at mini-golf talking to Brayden,” Caelan says. “You’re moving out.” 

“Oh,” Claude says, stunned, because that’s not at all how he wanted the boys to find out. He spent so long worrying over how to tell them that now, looking back, he almost doesn’t know how he ever expected it to end any other way. 

“Yeah,” Caelan says, like a challenge. 

And then Cam speaks up, “So we came up with a plan—”

“Shut up,” Carson hisses. 

“What plan?” Danny asks, and he sounds angry in that calm, quiet way that he gets. Claude can’t blame him; he’s been kept in the dark on all of this. 

The boys all fall silent, looking at their knees or their hands or the wall right over Claude’s shoulder, but they don’t say anything, and Claude wishes he knew what they were thinking. He hates that he caused all this, basically, because he was too fucking chicken to just come out with it and tell them that he was moving out. 

“ _What plan?_ ” Danny asks again, not playing around, and Caelan just scoffs, rolls his eyes. “You boys are already in so much trouble as it is, you might as well just tell me.”

“Claude just told you what we did,” he says. “It’s not like it’s a secret.” 

“Yeah, but _why_?” Claude asks. 

Carson reluctantly explains, “We thought that if we weren’t good, you'd feel like you had to stay to watch us.” 

“So you—?” Claude asks, and then he sits down on the edge of the coffee table and presses the heels of his palms against his closed eyelids. He lets out a long breath. “So you did all that shit just to get me to stay?” 

“ _Claude,_ ” Cam scolds, probably over the curse word, but Claude’s so far gone that he can’t bring himself to care. 

“Guys,” he says, “I’m not _going_ anywhere.” He’s been saying this for so long, all week, again and again, but he’s only ever said it to Danny, never to the boys, and maybe that’s the point. He’s just realizing that maybe they don’t know that; maybe they think he _is_ going somewhere. “I’m still going to be here every day; I’m just going to live somewhere else. Nothing is going to change except for where I go to sleep.” 

“It’s not going to be the same,” Carson said. 

“Yeah, Mom said that, too,” Cam says. “But it _is_ different.” 

And that—Claude sort of flounders a bit at that, because he’s not Sylvie, and him moving out isn’t anything like when Sylvie moved out. He doesn’t know what to say, and so he looks a little helplessly towards Danny, hoping to be bailed out. 

“Claude’s growing up, just like you guys,” Danny explains, taking pity on Claude and not even touching on the fact that the boys were seriously acting out this week, and that he’d been kept in the dark. “He deserves to have his own place, so he can do adult things and—”

“ _What did you do?_ ” Caelan asks like an accusation, and Claude’s so stunned by it that he reacts without even thinking. 

“I didn’t do anything!” he says, because Danny didn’t _kick him out._

“Not _you,_ ” Caelan says, and then he looks to Danny like Danny did something, and suddenly—

Suddenly, Claude gets what Caelan’s saying. He thinks Danny did something to make Claude want to leave, and that’s about as far from the truth as he could get; Danny’s only ever done things to make Claude want to stay. 

“Your dad didn’t do anything,” Claude says. “I love you guys, and I love your dad. None of you did anything to make me want to leave.” 

“Then why are you leaving?” Carson asks, and Claude shrugs. 

“I’m just—I’m growing up. You can’t live with your family forever.” 

“Yes, you can,” Carson challenges, and Claude brushes his own hair back off his forehead, just for something to do with his hands. 

“You guys,” Claude says, grasping for straws. “I’m still going to drive you to school every day, and I’m still going to pick you up in the afternoon. And we’re still going to play, like, knee hockey and go mini-golfing and stuff.” 

“But it’s not going to be _the same,_ ” Caelan says. “Mom has to love us because she’s our Mom; just because we picked you, that doesn’t mean you have to stick around once you move out.” 

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” Claude says. “But I picked you right back, so.” He shrugs. “You’ll just have to believe me.” 

“Well, I don’t feel right letting you live by yourself,” Cam says. “Because what if you throw a party, and it gets too wild and the cops come? It’s just better if you stay here.” 

“Who am I even going to throw a party _for_?” Claude asks. “But think about it: if I get an apartment with Brayden, you guys can come over all the time, and we can play video games there. Or we don’t have to! We could just keep hanging here, that’s cool too.” 

“Are we allowed over?” Carson asks. 

“Of _course,_ ” Claude says. “Open invitation, whenever you want.” 

“I still don’t like it,” Caelan says, and Claude can tell by the way he says it that he wants an argument. 

”Caelan…” Danny starts, a bit of a warning. 

“And that’s okay,” Claude tells him. “You don’t have to. But this is better, because now you and Carson don’t have to share a room.” 

“I’d rather you just stay.” 

“I know, bud,” Claude says helplessly, “but I’m moving out.” 

“Yeah, I _know,_ ” Caelan says, and then he stands up. “I’m mad, and I don’t want to talk to you right now.” 

He leaves the room and goes stomping upstairs, but at least they don’t hear a door slamming afterwards, which is good news. Claude looks at Danny, who just looks right back, and then he looks at Carson and Cam. 

“We just love you, Claude,” Cam says. “We want to keep you here until we go to college.” 

“You should have just told us when you made up your mind,” Carson says. 

“Yeah,” Claude agrees. “I should have. I’m sorry.” 

“S’okay, I guess,” Carson says, and then from upstairs, they hear Caelan let out a loud shout, followed by the loud thud of something falling to the floor. 

Claude immediately looks to Cam, because even if he doesn’t _know_ that Cam did something, he still knows _Cam,_ and Cam’s sly grin is doing nothing to hide that Claude is right. 

Caelan comes running down the stairs, and when he gets to the bottom, he holds one fist up in the air and says, “Alright, who put Frosted Flakes in my pillowcase?” 

Cam starts to laugh, and although he tries to hide it behind his hand, he’s out of luck, because Caelan’s on him in the blink of an eye. 

“I’m going to kill you,” he says, and then he lunges over the back of the couch for Cam, who’s still laughing, and rubs cereal crumbs into the side of his head. 

“It was part of the plan!” Cam yells, still laughing as he tries to get away, and he repeats it when Caelan flops over the couch, landing on top of him. “Ow! It was just a part of the plan!” 

“Oh my god,” Carson says long-sufferingly, but then he gets in the middle of things by trying to break them up, and the three of them tumble off the couch and onto the floor, laughing even harder as someone’s foot collides loudly with the coffee table. 

Claude glances over at Danny, and Danny doesn’t any more upset by any of it, the fact that he was left in the dark about so many things _or_ the wrestling match taking place on the carpet. Claude knows that they’ll talk about it, him and Danny, but he thinks that he should have expected this, the quiet acceptance, because Danny is Danny, and he knows that Claude would never do anything without thinking it was best for the boys. Danny know that Claude will always put the boys first, no matter what the circumstances, and that’s all there really is to it. 

“Any chance you and Brayden are looking for a third roommate?” Danny asks him dryly, and Claude smiles. 

 

Danny takes it easy on them and grounds the boys for a solid week, meaning that they’re actually only grounded for about two days. As an extra punishment for all the things he’s only just finding out about, he also makes the boys go to bed early, and refuses to let them watch tv. They put up a little bit of a fight over it, whining and dragging their feet, but eventually they’re all upstairs, and the lights are out, and it’s just Claude and Danny in the kitchen, Danny washing a pot that they had just let soak after dinner. 

Normally, Claude wouldn’t bother saying anything, but after the way the night went, he feels like he has to say, “You know the boys are just upstairs on their Nintendo DS, right?” 

“Yeah,” Danny says, smiling a little bit but not looking up at Claude, and Claude’s worried, a little bit, that he’s angrier than he seems. 

“Look, Danny,” Claude starts, trying to find something to convey just how shitty he feels about everything, something that says he loves the boys and he loves Danny, and that he doesn’t want to ever come between them, not in a million years. “I know I should have told you, and I meat to, I honestly did, but I thought…” Claude trails off, thinks for a second. “I didn’t know what they were doing, and I thought I had it under control.” 

“I know,” Danny says evenly, still watching his own hands as he washes the pot, and Claude wishes he knew what he was thinking. 

“It’s just,” Claude continues, because Danny doesn’t say anything else, “they’re good kids, Danny, you know they are, and I just kept thinking, this is a one-off, and then something would happen and I’d just forget to tell you. I didn’t mean to, uh. Overstep my—”

“Claude,” Danny says, stopping him, and then he shuts off the tap and places the pot upside down in the dish drain. When he looks up at Claude, he’s smiling small, and he says, “You didn’t overstep your boundaries. Yes, I would’ve liked to know, and you _should_ have told me, but I’m not mad that you took care of our boys the best way that you knew how to.” 

“Are you sure?” Claude asks. “Because I kind of really fucked this one up.” 

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t tell me a lot of things, but the kids are fine, and if this is the worst that we have to deal with from three young boys, it’s nothing.” 

“Oh,” Claude says, nodding to himself and trying to calm himself down; he was expecting a bit of a fight. “Okay, um. Good, I guess.” 

He sits at a barstool and drums his fingers on the countertop, watching as Danny dries his hands on a dishtowel and then grabs a beer from the fridge. It looks like Danny’s not really thinking about much of anything, and so it might be nothing, but Danny doesn’t ask if Claude wants a beer, and he doesn’t just assume that Claude will, like he normally does. 

“Are you _sure_ you’re not angry?” Claude asks, and it’s weird how, even to his own ears, he sounds so much like Cameron. 

Danny stops what he doing and looks right at Claude, letting out a laugh that’s really just a rush of air out of his nose. He says, “You actually told the boys; I’m _upset_ because this means you’re really leaving us.” He lets out another one of those barely audible laughs. “I guess I was just in denial, a little bit.” 

“But,” Claude says, his brow furrowed. He’s a little confused. “I thought you—”

“I know,” Danny says, interrupting, and even though Claude doesn’t know what he was going to say before he was cut off, he’s sure that Danny does. “And it’s the right thing for you to do; if you changed your mind now, I’d make you go anyway. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.” 

Claude nods a little, just because he doesn’t know what to say, and then he swallows down the lump in his throat. It should be easy, because this is what he wants, but it’s just not. 

“I’m gonna miss the shit out of you guys,” Claude says, even though he’ll still be seeing all four of them, almost every day of the week. 

“No, you won’t,” Danny says, not like he knows what Claude was thinking about seeing them all the time, but more like he’s so confident that Claude’s doing the right thing, and that he’ll have such a good time on his own, and with Brayden. Claude didn’t know how badly he needed to hear that from Danny— _especially_ from Danny—but now that it’s out there, the words hit him in the chest like a Mack truck, and knock all the air out of his lungs. 

Danny smiles and walks around the counter, and when he’s close enough, he pulls Claude into a hug, the type of hug that Claude never really gives the boys, because it says too much and is too honest, _I love you,_ and, _I’m proud of you,_ and, _I just want you to be happy,_ and Claude had always taken for granted that they just already knew. 

Standing there in the kitchen, hugging Danny harder than he’s ever hugged anyone—and over such a dumb thing, too, like moving ten minutes away—Claude suddenly realizes that he’s been looking at everything all wrong, because while they raised the boys together, Danny raised Claude all on his own, for all this time, without Claude even realizing it. 

He feels pretty rough for not thinking more about what moving out will do to Danny, too caught up in worrying about what it will do to the boys. He curls his fingertips in the back of Danny’s shirt and pulls him in closer, _Thank you,_ and, _I love you,_ and, _You’re my family, you know, and that’s never going to change._

“We’re going to miss you, too,” Danny tells him, his voice low and quiet and right in Claude’s ear, and something in Claude’s chest swells so much that he feels he can hardly breathe, his heart racing at the thought of how much everything is going to change—inevitably, irrevocably—even though he’s been telling anyone who will listen that it won’t. 

Danny hugs him just a little bit harder, and with one shaky breath, the pressure ebbs away, leaving behind just Claude, and just Danny, and just their boys, upstairs and pretending to be asleep. 

 

Claude wakes up the next morning to cold water dripping on his face. He startles awake, and in his sleepy haze, thins it’s one of the dogs drooling on him; he reaches out blindly to push them away, but his hand only hits the air. 

“M’no,” he mutters anyways, and then he hears muffled laughter before feeling more water land on his face. He’s still barely awake, but the laughter gives it away, to where he has vague ideas of what’s happening, even if he doesn’t understand why. 

Claude squints one eye open, keeping his hand held out in front of his face to block any future attacks. Caelan’s hovering over him, his face directly above Claude’s, and his hair is soaking wet. Another drop of water falls into Claude’s open palm, as Carson watches from just over Caelan’s shoulder, wearing a knit hat that Claude’s grandmother had made. 

“Come on, G,” Caelan says, smiling. “Get dressed.” 

“Did I oversleep?” Claude asks, because he doesn’t remember his alarm going off; if he slept through it, he can’t imagine Danny wouldn’t have woken him up when he went to wake the boys. “Why are you soaking wet? Your dad’s gonna kill you.” 

“Snow day,” Caelan tells him, smiling widely, and then he puts his freezing cold hands on the warm skin of Claude’s neck, causing Claude to let out a noise that isn’t human as he scrambles to push Caelan’s hands away. 

“It’s like he’s Hulking out right now,” Carson says, laughter in his voice. 

“I don’t deserve this!” Claude groans, his voice still thick with sleep, and he finally manages to grab Caelan’s wrists to force his hands away. Caelan struggles, but half-heartedly, and gives Claude time to blink the sleep out of his eyes. 

“G,” Caelan says. “You’re moving out; of course you deserve this.” 

And Claude just freezes up at that, because he thought they left things sort of okay last night, and he hates thinking that the boys are still upset over him moving, even if the tiniest, _tiniest_ part of him is glad. 

“It’s not—” Claude starts. 

“Yeah,” Carson interrupts. “We thought we had like six more years of torturing you while you were half asleep; we’ve got a lot to make up for.” 

“Not really,” Danny says, and when Claude looks over, Danny’s standing by the door, leaning against the doorjamb and watching the three of them with a small smile on his face. When Caelan notices him, he snatches his hands back and acts like he wasn’t doing anything. “Claude’ll still fall asleep on the couch all the time.” 

“What do you mean, _still_?” Claude asks, even though he knows it’s true. He looks at Danny’s cheeks, bright red like he’s been outside, and Claude wonders what he’s missed. 

Answering the question that Claude didn’t ask, Danny says, “We just got back from snow angels and walking the dog.” And then he tosses a towel at Caelan, adding dryly, “I thought you were changing so you didn’t turn into Otzi the Iceman, part two.” 

“Claude’s room is _on the way,_ ” Caelan points out, and Danny just shakes his head like, _Nice try._

Before Danny actually gets to say anything, though, they hear Cam running up the stairs, his boots clunking loud with each step. He comes skidding to a halt at the door, and looking around past Danny, he says, “Hey! I said I was gonna wake him up!” 

“You snooze, you lose,” Carson tells him. 

“Evidently,” Claude says, rubbing his warm hands over his neck, even though it’s not cold anymore. 

The boys just ignore him, and Cam announces, “It’s a snow day!” 

“Yeah,” Caelan says. “We _just_ told him that.” 

“But—” Cam starts, visibly upset, but then he lets it go and asks Claude, “Well, did they tell you that I took out the toboggans?” 

“Nope,” Claude answers honestly. 

“Oh,” Cam says with a wide smile. “I took out the toboggans. So let’s go, get dressed!” 

“I’m going, I’m going,” Claude says, and he throws back the comforter, turns so he can put his feet on the floor. 

Apparently Claude’s not moving fast enough, because Cam starts clicking his tongue like the ticking of a clock, and when everyone looks at him, he just laughs and darts down the hall, yelling, “ _Let’s go!_ ”

Caelan looks at Claude and says, “You’re leaving us with that.” 

“Don’t talk about your brother like that,” Danny says. “And go put on dry clothes.” 

He heads back down the stairs after Cam, and once he’s gone, Claude repeats, “Yeah, don’t talk about your brother like that.” 

“ _G,_ ” Caelan says, like, _What are we going to do with you?_

“You’re the worst,” Carson agrees, nodding. “Seriously, though, get dressed; I’m tired of waiting for you.” 

Claude gapes for a minute, but by the time he finally comes up with something to say in response, the boys are halfway out the door. He just lets them go in favor of finding the warmest clothes he has, planning how to force Caelan to borrow one of his jackets as he pulls on a sweatshirt. 

 

They get going not too long later, after Claude and Danny double-team Caelan into a Carhartt, and after Claude eats a mostly green banana while standing over the kitchen sink. They’re the only people outside so early, the sun just coming up and reflecting off the snow, and everything is so quiet except for how the boys’ shouts and shrieks of laughter cut through the silence. 

It’s freezing, but they still last about forty-five minutes sledding down the big hill behind their house before Danny starts dropping hints that he’s gearing up to head inside, saying things like, _I can’t feel my toes,_ and, _I’m cold; aren’t you boys cold?_ and, _I bought cider, if you guys want._ Claude’s cold, too, and has been ready to head inside since long before Danny ever said anything, and so he doesn’t really mind. 

“Oh, come on,” Carson says when he figures out what Danny’s up to. “Just a little longer.” 

“Yeah, please?” Cam says, looking at Danny so hopefully, and Claude doesn’t know how Danny does it, how he ever says no to them when he clearly loves them so much, infinitely more than they could ever possibly love him back. Claude loves each and every one of them exactly like that, and he feels so fucking lucky to have found them purely by chance, back when he was just a kid out of high school, looking for a job. Sometimes, Claude wonders what Danny ever saw in him, what made Danny hire Claude over all the other, more qualified people that wanted the same job, and then other times, Claude realizes that it doesn’t matter at all; all that matters is that Danny did, and that Claude never gave him a second to change his mind. 

“You can stay out; I want something hot to drink,” Danny tells the boys, shaking his head. “Don’t you?” 

“I kinda do,” Cam says. “But do we have hot chocolate?” 

“Of course,” Danny says. “What kind of father do you think I am?” 

“Well, I don’t know,” Cam says. “You always forget to buy grape jelly.” 

“That’s Claude,” Danny tells him, and Claude gives him a shove. 

“Throwing me under the bus!” he cries, and then he picks up the rope at the front of one of the toboggans. “Well, alright, I want one last ride before I head inside.” 

He starts dragging the toboggan up the hill, aware by the crunch of snow behind him that the boys are coming with, dragging the other one. Danny stays put at the bottom of the hill, and once they get to the top, Cam yells to him, “We’re gonna race down to you!” 

Claude angles his toboggan so that he’ll go down straight, and then he looks at Caelan and says, “Caelan, climb on the front.” 

“No,” Caelan says, just to be contrary, because that’s what he does. 

“Caelan,” Claude says again. “Climb on the front.” 

“ _Okay,_ ” he says long-sufferingly, and then he sits down, his legs crossed in front of him. 

Looking over to Carson and Cameron, Claude asks, “You ready?” 

“You’re going down, Claude,” Carson says. 

“ _Downtown,_ ” Cam adds, and Caelan scoffs, trying to hide a laugh. 

“If you say so,” Claude agrees, and they holler to Danny that they’re ready. Danny puts both arms in the air, and when he drops them, Claude puts his hands flat on Caelan’s back and pushes him, giving them a running start before he hops on. 

At first, they’re really flying down the hill, their weight pulling them way ahead of the other two, but the snow’s not that thick, and they hit something that sends them spinning out of control, launching the two of them off of the toboggan as the edge of the wood jams into the dirt and the toboggan flips over. 

Caelan and Claude land on top of each other about a meter away. Caelan’s groaning, but he’s laughing, too, and so is Claude, and they only laugh harder when the other two crash a split-second later, by colliding with their upturned toboggan. 

“Oh my god, G,” Caelan says, gasping for breath. “That was a horrible idea.” 

He rolls off of Claude’s legs and then sits up, brushing the snow off of his shoulders and out of his hair as he does. Not too far away, Carson and Cameron are doing the same, laughing and saying, _This isn’t The Fast and the Furious 16, Cameron!_ and, _They’re actually only up to seven, I think._

“You guys alive?” Danny calls out to them, not sounding particularly worried. 

“No,” Claude yells back, even though he’s fine. 

“Okay,” Danny says. “Well, I’m going to head inside and start the drinks. You’ve all lost the race, by the way; the dogs are the only winners, because they’re warm and inside.” 

“ _Dad,_ ” Caelan says, and Danny just laughs before heading back to the house. 

Claude knows he should move, too, but for some reason, he just doesn’t, and instead lies there in the snow, staring at the early morning sky and listening to the boys laugh around him. He thinks they did a good job, him and Danny; their boys turned out pretty alright. 

Cam’s face pops into his line of sight as he leans over Claude, just like Caelan had earlier that morning. He says, “You need to make sure that your new place has a really good sledding hill.” 

“No, he doesn’t,” Caelan says. “He’s like Dad; he never goes sledding unless we make him.” 

“I go sledding sometimes,” Claude says, finally sitting up. He can feel the snow slowly starting to seep through the back of his jacket. 

“You really don’t,” Carson tells him, apologetic. 

“Yeah, no,” Cam says. “I meant for me, in case I come over.” 

“Oh, right,” Claude deadpans. “Of course.” 

“And I’ve been thinking,” Cam continues, “and you should get a Ping-Pong table, and just use it as a kitchen table when you’re not playing.” 

“Good hill; Ping-Pong table,” Claude lists. “Anything else, your highness?” 

“Um, no,” Cam says. “But I’ll let you know when I think of more.” 

“He’s _joking, doofus,” Caelan says._

“Yeah, he was being sarcastic,” Carson agrees, and Claude rolls his eyes. 

“Alright, already,” he says. “Help an old man up.” He extends one hand out to Caelan, and when Caelan takes it, Claude uses his other hand to shove snow down the back of his jacket. 

“ _Ahh!_ ” Caelan shouts, jumping in place and rushing to get the snow off his skin, and since retaliation is bound to happen, Claude takes off at a run, scooping up more snow as he goes. 

“You have much to learn, Young Grasshopper!” Claude calls back over his shoulder, and he can feel a snowball just clip his heel as he runs. 

“ _Claude!_ ” Caelan yells like a threat, and glancing back, Claude can see all three of them running after him, trying to catch up. He blindly lobs his lone snowball backwards, hoping that it hits one of them, and even though he knows that he could be back at the sliding glass door of the house before they ever catch up to him, Claude stops running and ducks behind a tree for cover. 

A second later, there’s a thud as a snowball hits the tree, and Claude calls out to them, “Truce?” 

“ _Never!_ ” Carson yells, and so Claude leans around the side of the tree to throw a snowball back at them. 

“Danny!” Claude yells as loudly as he can, even though the neighbors will probably hate him for it. “Danny, I’m under attack!” 

And that’s all it takes, because Danny’s as good as they come, and he proves that by launching himself out of the house, only halfway back into his jacket, hollering like George of the Jungle as he slips his arm through the open sleeve and then scoops snow up between his two cupped palms. 

“For Claude!” Danny hollers, lobbing his snowball at Cam; Cam blocks it with his forearm—Danny’s got great aim, _shit_ —and from around the trunk of the tree, Claude can see the snowball lose its shape and fall to the ground. 

“Wait!” Cam says, brushing off the sleeve of his coat. “I want to be on your team.” 

“Geriatrics only,” Caelan tells him. 

“What does that mean?” 

“It’s another word for _old people,_ ” Caelan says, and Claude gets that Caelan’s still upset about him moving out, and that this is his way of coping, by pretending like he doesn’t really want or need Claude to stay, because Claude’s old and doesn’t know how to have fun. It’s not funny, because Claude genuinely does feel bad about making the boys feel this way, but he laughs anyway, because—

He’s _twenty-four._ He’s never been out of the country, never been married, never had wrinkles or grey hair. He’s never even lived on his own, and that’s the whole point of why he’s doing what he’s doing. 

It’s only as he’s sitting there, crouched behind a tree to avoid being hit by snow, that Claude suddenly understands what the boys really mean, in a way: he has kids at twenty-four; that’s older than Danny was when he first had them, and even if they aren’t actually Claude’s, they’re Claude’s in all the ways that matter, in ways that don’t make them any less Danny’s, or any less Sylvie’s, but that still just make them _Claude’s,_ not his sons, and not his brothers, but just _his,_ no matter what happens or where they all end up, no matter who they marry, or where they live, or what they do with their lives. Claude gets that now, and he gets that something about that makes him seem incredibly old to them, same as it makes them seem incredibly young to him. 

There's a part of Claude that wants it to stay that way forever, but an even larger part of him is dying to see what comes next, to see who the boys grow up to be, and where Danny ends up, and how the five of them fit together as adults, not quite friends but not just family, either, because neither word even comes close. Claude's excited to see who he turns out to be, too, because while he likes twenty-four-year-old live-in mansitter Claude, he knows that he can't—and won't—be that forever. 

But for right now, in snow-soaked jeans, his fingers frozen and his nose running, Claude listens to Danny and Cam laughing, to Caelan calling him a coward for hiding, and to Carson bawking like a chicken, and there's no place in the world that Claude would rather be, not even out on Marc's frozen pond with the guys, a puck on his tape. 

Claude scoops up some more snow with his numb fingers, and then launches himself out from behind the tree. 

**Author's Note:**

> For starters, this whole fic is based on the [very real fact](http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nhl--claude-giroux-leads-philadelphia-flyers-past-the-penguins-and-into-round-2-.html) that Claude moved out of the Briere house and in with Brayden. He also really [called Reemer a pigeon](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/64223225185/jimrob-giroux-to-jvr-fucking-pigeon-coo-coo) and then cooed at him, [took Biz as his date](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFyaUGOheU8) to an event, and [ called his own shootout move "The Datsyuk."](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/49442086161/bangbangclaudegirouxgang-claude-giroux-on-the) Here's [Cabbie giving Claude hats.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7FUXlKnLpM) Also, if you thought Claude couldn't get any more ridiculous, [him calling shotgun on fighting Carl Hagelin](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/65001078402/phillyxlove-shotgun-62-he-can-talk-smack) was a real thing, he really did [tattle on Anisimov for interfering](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/53400313991/themeagantron-claude-giroux-the-tattle-tale), and a [very blonde Claude](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/65001583858/hartnell-down-look-at-this-photograph-every) did indeed hang out with Marchy. How is he a real person? I don't even know.
> 
> All the songs that Claude listens to are songs that he's [on record as saying that he likes](http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/music_nightlife/Claude-Girouxs-Top-10-Songs-of-2012.html), and Claude doing [drunk karaoke?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ssv1rYHS4) Very real. And very, very embarrassing.
> 
> As for the Brieres, Danny really was [nicknamed The Cookie Monster,](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgcZbKME0EI) at one point. Here are [some pictures of him and the boys](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/64601173212/dannybriereisaliferuiner-danny-and-his-boys) (or ["our boys,"](http://articles.philly.com/2011-01-30/sports/27091300_1_giroux-and-briere-uncle-jesse-sunday-s-all-star) as he refers to them, meaning his and Claude's). The [car crash](http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=5298459) is sadly true, and to make up for ruining your day by telling you that, have this: [Cam worried that Claude will throw wild parties if he lives on his own.](http://youtu.be/plkN6WuEGyQ?t=2m8s)
> 
> Regarding the ensemble cast, [Coots has a big head](http://youtu.be/pniU52eHG0Q?t=1m5s), and here's [Coots taking out his teeth](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/48832114340). Here's [Marchy telling someone they've also got a big dome](http://youtu.be/Kd_mGFtVWSQ?t=10s) (spoiler: he's not saying it to Coots), and [his dumb, misspelled Stanley Cup Champians tattoo](http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Brad-Marchand-confirms-his-Stanley-Cup-tattoo-wa?urn=nhl-wp13420). Here's [Hal Gil's potluck choice,](http://youtu.be/o-n3p5sX0aI?t=1m53s) [the Jody Shelley sub](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShKRulVm52M), Jake tweeting that [Hartsy and G should makeout](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/64693318951/lalalalynds-seancouturiersbeard-yup-still), ["Jakey mix in a salad," ](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/57442260830/dannysbriere-off-season-chirping-a-la-philly) [Hallsy's super passive-aggressive tweeting](https://twitter.com/hallsy04/status/346698348918628352), [Biz going to the American Girl Doll store](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/49820038322/i-learned-today-what-it-takes-to-be-a-father-with), [Bobby G's babysitting adventure](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/52224562832/hockeybroad-bobby-goepfert-babysits), and a [naked Wayne Gretzky. ](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/64996793489/spookierthanseguin-the-greatest-hockey-player)
> 
> You guys must be sick of me, if you made it this far, so I'll wrap it all up: [Crosby (allegedly!) going intentionally for Claude's wrists](http://prohockeytalk.nbcsports.com/2012/07/27/giroux-on-surgically-repaired-wrists-those-are-from-crosby/), [Jagr pumping his own tires while Claude works out](http://youtu.be/Y3MuaWGlfS0?t=55s), [the book quoted that Cam was reading](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skybreaker), [Skinner taking short shifts](http://youtu.be/aXmKn4seWHk?t=1m1s), [Henke chirping Biz for his shooting skills](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/43116639089/seabrooks), [Gags saving Ebs from a scrum](http://luxover.tumblr.com/post/44000970050/kanershuffle-your-toews-puckling), and lovely, lovely fact that [Tuukka really likes chicken wings.](http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/bruins/post/_/id/11193/marchand-diary-dishing-on-teammates)
> 
> And that's it! Thank you guys so, so much for reading!!


End file.
